WARREN HASTINGS

(October 1841)

_Memoirs of the Life of Warren Hastings, first Governor-General of

Bengal. Compiled from Original Papers, by the Rev. G.R. GLEIG M.A. 3

vols. 8vo. London: 1841._

WE are inclined to think that we shall best meet the wishes of our

readers, if, instead of minutely examining this book, we attempt to

give, in a way necessarily hasty and imperfect, our own view of the life

and character of Mr. Hastings. Our feeling towards him is not exactly

that of the House of Commons which impeached him in 1787; neither is it

that of the House of Commons which uncovered and stood up to receive him

in 1813. He had great qualities, and he rendered great services to the

State. But to represent him as a man of stainless virtue is to make him

ridiculous; and from regard for his memory, if from no other feeling,

his friends would have done well to lend no countenance to such

adulation. We believe that, if he were now living, he would have

sufficient judgment and sufficient greatness of mind to wish to be shown

as he was. He must have known that there were dark spots on his fame.

He might also have felt with pride that the splendour of his fame would

bear many spots. He would have wished posterity to have a likeness of

him, though an unfavourable likeness, rather than a daub at once insipid

and unnatural, resembling neither him nor anybody else. “Paint me as I

am,” said Oliver Cromwell, while sitting to young Lely. “If you leave

out the scars and wrinkles, I will not pay you a shilling.” Even in

such a trifle, the great Protector showed both his good sense and

his magnanimity. He did not wish all that was characteristic in his

countenance to be lost, in the vain attempt to give him the regular

features and smooth blooming cheeks of the curl-pated minions of James

the First. He was content that his face should go forth marked with all

the blemishes which had been put on it by time, by war, by sleepless

nights, by anxiety, perhaps by remorse; but with valour, policy,

authority, and public care written in all its princely lines. If men

truly great knew their own interest, it is thus that they would wish

their minds to be portrayed.

Warren Hastings sprang from an ancient and illustrious race. It has

been affirmed that his pedigree can be traced back to the great Danish

sea-king, whose sails were long the terror of both coasts of the British

Channel, and who, after many fierce and doubtful struggles, yielded at

last to the valour and genius of Alfred. But the undoubted splendour

of the line of Hastings needs no illustration from fable. One branch of

that line wore, in the fourteenth century, the coronet of Pembroke. From

another branch sprang the renowned Chamberlain, the faithful adherent

of the White Rose, whose fate has furnished so striking a theme both to

poets and to historians. His family received from the Tudors the earldom

of Huntingdon, which, after long dispossession, was regained in our time

by a series of events scarcely paralleled in romance.

The lords of the manor of Daylesford, in Worcestershire, claimed to be

considered as the heads of this distinguished family. The main stock,

indeed, prospered less than some of the younger shoots. But the

Daylesford family, though not ennobled, was wealthy and highly

considered, till, about two hundred years ago, it was overwhelmed by

the great ruin of the civil war. The Hastings of that time was a zealous

cavalier. He raised money on his lands, sent his plate to the mint at

Oxford, joined the royal army, and, after spending half his property

in the cause of King Charles, was glad to ransom himself by making

over most of the remaining half to Speaker Lenthal. The old seat at

Daylesford still remained in the family; but it could no longer be kept

up: and in the following generation it was sold to a merchant of London.

Before this transfer took place, the last Hastings of Daylesford had

presented his second son to the rectory of the parish in which the

ancient residence of the family stood. The living was of little value;

and the situation of the poor clergyman, after the sale of the estate,

was deplorable. He was constantly engaged in lawsuits about his tithes

with the new lord of the manor, and was at length utterly ruined. His

eldest son, Howard, a well-conducted young man, obtained a place in the

Customs. The second son, Pynaston, an idle worthless boy, married before

he was sixteen, lost his wife in two years, and died in the West Indies,

leaving to the care of his unfortunate father a little orphan, destined

to strange and memorable vicissitudes of fortune.

Warren, the son of Pynaston, was born on the sixth of December, 1731.

His mother died a few days later, and he was left dependent on his

distressed grandfather. The child was early sent to the village school,

where he learned his letters on the same bench with the sons of the

peasantry; nor did anything in his garb or face indicate that his life

was to take a widely different course from that of the young rustics

with whom he studied and played. But no cloud could overcast the dawn

of so much genius and so much ambition. The very ploughmen observed, and

long remembered, how kindly little Warren took to his book. The daily

sight of the lands which his ancestors had possessed, and which had

passed into the hands of strangers, filled his young brain with wild

fancies and projects. He loved to hear stories of the wealth and

greatness of his progenitors, of their splendid housekeeping, their

loyalty, and their valour. On one bright summer day, the boy, then just

seven years old, lay on the bank of the rivulet which flows through the

old domain of his house to join the Isis. There, as threescore and ten

years later he told the tale, rose in his mind a scheme which, through

all the turns of his eventful career, was never abandoned. He would

recover the estate which had belonged to his fathers. He would be

Hastings of Daylesford. This purpose, formed in infancy and poverty,

grew stronger as his intellect expanded and as his fortune rose. He

pursued his plan with that calm but indomitable force of will which was

the most striking peculiarity of his character. When, under a tropical

sun, he ruled fifty millions of Asiatics, his hopes, amidst all the

cares of war, finance, and legislation, still pointed to Daylesford. And

when his long public life, so singularly chequered with good and

evil, with glory and obloquy, had at length closed for ever, it was to

Daylesford that he retired to die.

When he was eight years old, his uncle Howard determined to take charge

of him, and to give him a liberal education. The boy went up to London,

and was sent to a school at Newington, where he was well taught but ill

fed. He always attributed the smallness of his stature to the hard

and scanty fare of this seminary. At ten he was removed to Westminster

school, then flourishing under the care of Dr. Nichols. Vinny Bourne, as

his pupils affectionately called him, was one of the masters. Churchill,

Colman, Lloyd, Cumberland, Cowper, were among the students. With Cowper,

Hastings formed a friendship which neither the lapse of time, nor a wide

dissimilarity of opinions and pursuits, could wholly dissolve. It does

not appear that they ever met after they had grown to manhood. But

forty years later, when the voices of many great orators were crying

for vengeance on the oppressor of India, the shy and secluded poet could

image to himself Hastings the Governor-General only as the Hastings with

whom he had rowed on the Thames and played in the cloister, and refused

to believe that so good-tempered a fellow could have done anything very

wrong. His own life had been spent in praying, musing, and rhyming among

the waterlilies of the Ouse. He had preserved in no common measure the

innocence of childhood. His spirit had indeed been severely tried, but

not by temptations which impelled him to any gross violation of the

rules of social morality. He had never been attacked by combinations

of powerful and deadly enemies. He had never been compelled to make a

choice between innocence and greatness, between crime and ruin. Firmly

as he held in theory the doctrine of human depravity, his habits were

such that he was unable to conceive how far from the path of right even

kind and noble natures may be hurried by the rage of conflict and the

lust of dominion.

Hastings had another associate at Westminster of whom we shall have

occasion to make frequent mention, Elijah Impey. We know little about

their school days. But, we think, we may safely venture to guess that,

whenever Hastings wished to play any trick more than usually naughty, he

hired Impey with a tart or a ball to act as fag in the worst part of the

prank.

Warren was distinguished among his comrades as an excellent swimmer,

boatman, and scholar. At fourteen he was first in the examination for

the foundation. His name in gilded letters on the walls of the dormitory

still attests his victory over many older competitors. He stayed two

years longer at the school, and was looking forward to a studentship at

Christ Church, when an event happened which changed the whole course of

his life. Howard Hastings died, bequeathing his nephew to the care of a

friend and distant relation, named Chiswick. This gentleman, though he

did not absolutely refuse the charge, was desirous to rid himself of it

as soon as possible. Dr. Nichols made strong remonstrances against the

cruelty of interrupting the studies of a youth who seemed likely to

be one of the first scholars of the age. He even offered to bear the

expense of sending his favourite pupil to Oxford. But Mr. Chiswick

was inflexible. He thought the years which had already been wasted on

hexameters and pentameters quite sufficient. He had it in his power

to obtain for the lad a writership in the service of the East India

Company. Whether the young adventurer, when once shipped off, made a

fortune, or died of a liver complaint, he equally ceased to be a burden

to anybody. Warren was accordingly removed from Westminster school, and

placed for a few months at a commercial academy, to study arithmetic

and book-keeping. In January 1750, a few days after he had completed his

seventeenth year, he sailed for Bengal, and arrived at his destination

in the October following.

He was immediately placed at a desk in the Secretary’s office at

Calcutta, and laboured there during two years. Fort William was then

purely a commercial settlement. In the south of India the encroaching

policy of Dupleix had transformed the servants of the English Company,

against their will, into diplomatists and Generals. The war of the

succession was raging in the Carnatic; and the tide had been suddenly

turned against the French by the genius of young Robert Clive. But in

Bengal the European settlers, at peace with the natives and with each

other, were wholly occupied with ledgers and bills of lading.

After two years passed in keeping accounts at Calcutta, Hastings was

sent up the country to Cossimbazar, a town which lies on the Hoogley,

about a mile from Moorshedabad, and which then bore to Moorshedabad a

relation, if we may compare small things with great, such as the city

of London bears to Westminster. Moorshedabad was the abode of the prince

who, by an authority ostensibly derived from the Mogul, but really

independent, ruled the three great provinces of Bengal, Orissa, and

Bahar. At Moorshedabad were the court, the harem, and the public

offices. Cossimbazar was a port and a place of trade, renowned for the

quantity and excellence of the silks which were sold in its marts, and

constantly receiving and sending forth fleets of richly laden barges.

At this important point, the Company had established a small factory

subordinate to that of Fort William. Here, during several years,

Hastings was employed in making bargains for stuffs with native brokers.

While he was thus engaged, Surajah Dowlah succeeded to the government,

and declared war against the English. The defenceless settlement of

Cossimbazar, lying close to the tyrant’s capital, was instantly seized.

Hastings was sent a prisoner to Moorshedabad, but, in consequence of the

humane intervention of the servants of the Dutch Company, was treated

with indulgence. Meanwhile the Nabob marched on Calcutta; the governor

and the commandant fled; the town and citadel were taken, and most of

the English prisoners perished in the Black Hole.

In these events originated the greatness of Warren Hastings. The

fugitive governor and his companions had taken refuge on the dreary

islet of Fulda, near the mouth of the Hoogley. They were naturally

desirous to obtain full information respecting the proceedings of the

Nabob; and no person seemed so likely to furnish it as Hastings, who was

a prisoner at large in the immediate neighbourhood of the court. He thus

became a diplomatic agent, and soon established a high character for

ability and resolution. The treason which at a later period was fatal to

Surajah Dowlah was already in progress; and Hastings was admitted to

the deliberations of the conspirators. But the time for striking had not

arrived. It was necessary to postpone the execution of the design; and

Hastings, who was now in extreme peril, fled to Fulda.

Soon after his arrival at Fulda, the expedition from Madras, commanded

by Clive, appeared in the Hoogley. Warren, young, intrepid, and excited

probably by the example of the Commander of the Forces, who, having

like himself been a mercantile agent of the Company, had been turned

by public calamities into a soldier, determined to serve in the ranks.

During the early operations of the war he carried a musket. But the

quick eye of Clive soon perceived that the head of the young volunteer

would be more useful than his arm. When, after the battle of Plassey,

Meer Jaffier was proclaimed Nabob of Bengal, Hastings was appointed to

reside at the court of the new prince as agent for the Company.

He remained at Moorshedabad till the year 1761, when he became a Member

of Council, and was consequently forced to reside at Calcutta. This was

during the interval between Clive’s first and second administration, an

interval which has left on the fame of the East India Company a stain

not wholly effaced by many years of just and humane government. Mr.

Vansittart, the Governor, was at the head of a new and anomalous empire.

On one side was a band of English functionaries, daring, intelligent,

eager to be rich. On the other side was a great native population,

helpless, timid, accustomed to crouch under oppression. To keep the

stronger race from preying on the weaker, was an undertaking which

tasked to the utmost the talents and energy of Clive. Vansittart, with

fair intentions, was a feeble and inefficient ruler. The master caste,

as was natural, broke loose from all restraint; and then was seen what

we believe to be the most frightful of all spectacles, the strength of

civilisation without its mercy. To all other despotism there is a check,

imperfect indeed, and liable to gross abuse, but still sufficient to

preserve society from the last extreme of misery. A time comes when the

evils of submission are obviously greater than those of resistance, when

fear itself begets a sort of courage, when a convulsive burst of popular

rage and despair warns tyrants not to presume too far on the patience of

mankind. But against misgovernment such as then afflicted Bengal it

was impossible to struggle. The superior intelligence and energy of the

dominant class made their power irresistible. A war of Bengalees against

Englishmen was like a war of sheep against wolves, of men against

daemons. The only protection which the conquered could find was in the

moderation, the clemency, the enlarged policy of the conquerors. That

protection, at a later period, they found. But at first English power

came among them unaccompanied by English morality. There was an interval

between the time at which they became our subjects, and the time at

which we began to reflect that we were bound to discharge towards them

the duties of rulers. During that interval the business of a servant

of the Company was simply to wring out of the natives a hundred or two

hundred thousand pounds as speedily as possible, that he might return

home before his constitution had suffered from the heat, to marry a

peer’s daughter, to buy rotten boroughs in Cornwall, and to give balls

in St. James’s Square. Of the conduct of Hastings at this time little is

known; but the little that is known, and the circumstance that little is

known, must be considered as honourable to him. He could not protect

the natives: all that he could do was to abstain from plundering and

oppressing them; and this he appears to have done. It is certain that at

this time he continued poor; and it is equally certain that by cruelty

and dishonesty he might easily have become rich. It is certain that he

was never charged with having borne a share in the worst abuses which

then prevailed; and it is almost equally certain that, if he had borne

a share in those abuses, the able and bitter enemies who afterwards

persecuted him would not have failed to discover and to proclaim his

guilt. The keen, severe, and even malevolent scrutiny to which his whole

public life was subjected, a scrutiny unparalleled, as we believe,

in the history of mankind, is in one respect advantageous to his

reputation. It brought many lamentable blemishes to light; but it

entitles him to be considered pure from every blemish which has not been

brought to light.

The truth is that the temptations to which so many English functionaries

yielded in the time of Mr. Vansittart were not temptations addressed

to the ruling passions of Warren Hastings. He was not squeamish in

pecuniary transactions; but he was neither sordid nor rapacious. He

was far too enlightened a man to look on a great empire merely as a

buccaneer would look on a galleon. Had his heart been much worse than it

was, his understanding would have preserved him from that extremity of

baseness. He was an unscrupulous, perhaps an unprincipled statesman; but

still he was a statesman, and not a freebooter.

In 1764 Hastings returned to England. He had realised only a very

moderate fortune; and that moderate fortune was soon reduced to nothing,

partly by his praiseworthy liberality, and partly by his mismanagement.

Towards his relations he appears to have acted very generously. The

greater part of his savings he left in Bengal, hoping probably to obtain

the high usury of India. But high usury and bad security generally go

together; and Hastings lost both interest and principal.

He remained four years in England. Of his life at this time very little

is known. But it has been asserted, and is highly probable, that liberal

studies and the society of men of letters occupied a great part of

his time. It is to be remembered to his honour that, in days when the

languages of the East were regarded by other servants of the Company

merely as the means of communicating with weavers and moneychangers, his

enlarged and accomplished mind sought in Asiatic learning for new forms

of intellectual enjoyment, and for new views of government and society.

Perhaps, like most persons who have paid much attention to departments

of knowledge which he out of the common track, he was inclined to

overrate the value of his favourite studies. He conceived that the

cultivation of Persian literature might with advantage be made a part

of the liberal education of an English gentleman; and he drew up a

plan with that view. It is said that the University of Oxford, in which

Oriental learning had never, since the revival of letters, been wholly

neglected, was to be the seat of the institution which he contemplated.

An endowment was expected from the munificence of the Company: and

professors thoroughly competent to interpret Hafiz and Ferdusi were to

be engaged in the East. Hastings called on Johnson, with the hope, as

it should seem, of interesting in this project a man who enjoyed the

highest literary reputation, and who was particularly connected with

Oxford. The interview appears to have left on Johnson’s mind a most

favourable impression of the talents and attainments of his visitor.

Long after, when Hastings was ruling the immense population of British

India, the old philosopher wrote to him, and referred in the most

courtly terms, though with great dignity, to their short but agreeable

intercourse.

Hastings soon began to look again towards India. He had little to

attach him to England; and his pecuniary embarrassments were great. He

solicited his old masters the Directors for employment, They acceded

to his request, with high compliments both to his abilities and to his

integrity, and appointed him a Member of Council at Madras. It would

be unjust not to mention that, though forced to borrow money for

his outfit, he did not withdraw any portion of the sum which he had

appropriated to the relief of his distressed relations. In the spring of

1769 he embarked on board of the Duke of Grafton, and commenced a voyage

distinguished by incidents which might furnish matter for a novel.

Among the passengers in the Duke of Grafton was a German of the name

of Imhoff. He called himself a Baron; but he was in distressed

circumstances, and was going out to Madras as a portrait-painter, in the

hope of picking up some of the pagodas which were then lightly got and

as lightly spent by the English in India. The Baron was accompanied by

his wife, a native, we have somewhere read, of Archangel. This young

woman, who, born under the Arctic circle, was destined to play the

part of a Queen under the tropic of Cancer, had an agreeable person,

a cultivated mind, and manners in the highest degree engaging. She

despised her husband heartily, and, as the story which we have to tell

sufficiently proves, not without reason. She was interested by the

conversation and flattered by the attentions of Hastings. The situation

was indeed perilous. No place is so propitious to the formation either

of close friendships or of deadly enmities as an Indiaman. There are

very few people who do not find a voyage which lasts several months

insupportably dull. Anything is welcome which may break that long

monotony, a sail, a shark, an albatross, a man overboard. Most

passengers find some resource in eating twice as many meals as on land.

But the great devices for killing the time are quarrelling and flirting.

The facilities for both these exciting pursuits are great. The inmates

of the ship are thrown together far more than in any country-seat or

boarding-house. None can escape from the rest except by imprisoning

himself in a cell in which he can hardly turn. All food, all exercise,

is taken in company. Ceremony is to a great extent banished. It is

every day in the power of a mischievous person to inflict innumerable

annoyances. It is every day in the power of an amiable person to confer

little services. It not seldom happens that serious distress and danger

call forth, in genuine beauty and deformity, heroic virtues and abject

vices which, in the ordinary intercourse of good society, might remain

during many years unknown even to intimate associates. Under such

circumstances met Warren Hastings and the Baroness Imhoff, two persons

whose accomplishments would have attracted notice in any court of

Europe. The gentleman had no domestic ties. The lady was tied to a

husband for whom she had no regard, and who had no regard for his own

honour. An attachment sprang up, which was soon strengthened by events

such as could hardly have occurred on land. Hastings fell ill. The

Baroness nursed him with womanly tenderness, gave him his medicines with

her own hand, and even sat up in his cabin while he slept. Long before

the Duke of Grafton reached Madras, Hastings was in love. But his love

was of a most characteristic description. Like his hatred, like his

ambition, like all his passions, it was strong, but not impetuous. It

was calm, deep, earnest, patient of delay, unconquerable by time.

Imhoff was called into council by his wife and his wife’s lover. It was

arranged that the Baroness should institute a suit for a divorce in the

courts of Franconia, that the Baron should afford every facility to the

proceeding, and that, during the years which might elapse before the

sentence should be pronounced, they should continue to live together. It

was also agreed that Hastings should bestow some very substantial marks

of gratitude on the complaisant husband, and should, when the marriage

was dissolved, make the lady his wife, and adopt the children whom she

had already borne to Imhoff.

At Madras, Hastings found the trade of the Company in a very

disorganised state. His own tastes would have led him rather to

political than to commercial pursuits: but he knew that the favour

of his employers depended chiefly on their dividends, and that their

dividends depended chiefly on the investment. He, therefore, with great

judgment, determined to apply his vigorous mind for a time to this

department of business, which had been much neglected, since the

servants of the Company had ceased to be clerks, and had become warriors

and negotiators.

In a very few months he effected an important reform. The Directors

notified to him their high approbation, and were so much pleased

with his conduct that they determined to place him at the head of the

government at Bengal. Early in 1772 he quitted Fort St. George for his

new post. The Imhoffs, who were still man and wife, accompanied him,

and lived at Calcutta on the same plan which they had already followed

during more than two years.

When Hastings took his seat at the head of the council-board, Bengal was

still governed according to the system which Clive had devised, a system

which was, perhaps, skilfully contrived for the purpose of facilitating

and concealing a great revolution, but which, when that revolution was

complete and irrevocable, could produce nothing but inconvenience. There

were two governments, the real and the ostensible. The supreme power

belonged to the Company, and was in truth the most despotic power that

can be conceived. The only restraint on the English masters of the

country was that which their own justice and humanity imposed on them.

There was no constitutional check on their will, and resistance to them

was utterly hopeless.

But though thus absolute in reality the English had not yet assumed

the style of sovereignty. They held their territories as vassals of the

throne of Delhi; they raised their revenues as collectors appointed

by the imperial commission; their public seal was inscribed with the

imperial titles; and their mint struck only the imperial coin.

There was still a nabob of Bengal, who stood to the English rulers of

his country in the same relation in which Augustulus stood to Odoacer,

or the last Merovingians to Charles Martel and Pepin. He lived at

Moorshedabad, surrounded by princely magnificence. He was approached

with outward marks of reverence, and his name was used in public

instruments. But in the government of the country he had less real share

than the youngest writer or cadet in the Company’s service.

The English council which represented the Company at Calcutta was

constituted on a very different plan from that which has since been

adopted. At present the Governor is, as to all executive measures,

absolute. He can declare war, conclude peace, appoint public

functionaries or remove them, in opposition to the unanimous sense of

those who sit with him in council. They are, indeed, entitled to

know all that is done, to discuss all that is done, to advise, to

remonstrate, to send protests to England. But it is with the Governor

that the supreme power resides, and on him that the whole responsibility

rests. This system, which was introduced by Mr. Pitt and Mr. Dundas in

spite of the strenuous opposition of Mr. Burke, we conceive to be on

the whole the best that was ever devised for the government of a country

where no materials can be found for a representative constitution. In

the time of Hastings the Governor had only one vote in council, and,

in case of an equal division, a casting vote. It therefore happened not

unfrequently that he was overruled on the gravest questions and it was

possible that he might be wholly excluded, for years together, from the

real direction of public affairs.

The English functionaries at Fort William had as yet paid little or

no attention to the internal government of Bengal. The only branch of

politics about which they much busied themselves was negotiation with

the native princes. The police, the administration of justice, the

details of the collection of revenue, were almost entirely neglected.

We may remark that the phraseology of the Company’s servants still bears

the traces of this state of things. To this day they always use the word

“political,” as synonymous with “diplomatic.” We could name a gentleman

still living, who was described by the highest authority as an

invaluable public servant, eminently fit to be at the head of the

internal administration of a whole presidency, but unfortunately quite

ignorant of all political business.

The internal government of Bengal the English rulers delegated to a

great native minister, who was stationed at Moorshedabad. All military

affairs, and, with the exception of what pertains to mere ceremonial,

all foreign affairs, were withdrawn from his control; but the other

departments of the administration were entirely confided to him. His own

stipend amounted to near a hundred thousand pounds sterling a year. The

personal allowance of the nabob, amounting to more than three hundred

thousand pounds a year, passed through the minister’s hands, and was,

to a great extent, at his disposal. The collection of the revenue, the

administration of justice, the maintenance of order, were left to this

high functionary; and for the exercise of his immense power he was

responsible to none but the British masters of the country.

A situation so important, lucrative, and splendid, was naturally an

object of ambition to the ablest and most powerful natives. Clive

had found it difficult to decide between conflicting pretensions.

Two candidates stood out prominently from the crowd, each of them the

representative of a race and of a religion.

One of these was Mahommed Reza Khan, a Mussulman of Persian extraction,

able, active, religious after the fashion of his people, and highly

esteemed by them. In England he might perhaps have been regarded as

a corrupt and greedy politician. But, tried by the lower standard

of Indian morality, he might be considered as a man of integrity and

honour.

His competitor was a Hindoo Brahmin whose name has by a terrible and

melancholy event, been inseparably associated with that of Warren

Hastings, the Maharajah Nuncomar. This man had played an important part

in all the revolutions which, since the time of Surajah Dowlah, had

taken place in Bengal. To the consideration which in that country

belongs to high and pure caste, he added the weight which is derived

from wealth, talents, and experience. Of his moral character it is

difficult to give a notion to those who are acquainted with human nature

only as it appears in our island. What the Italian is to the Englishman,

what the Hindoo is to the Italian, what the Bengalee is to other

Hindoos, that was Nuncomar to other Bengalees. The physical organisation

of the Bengalee is feeble even to effeminacy. He lives in a constant

vapour bath. His pursuits are sedentary, his limbs delicate, his

movements languid. During many ages he has been trampled upon by men

of bolder and more hardy breeds. Courage, independence, veracity,

are qualities to which his constitution and his situation are equally

unfavourable. His mind bears a singular analogy to his body. It is

weak even to helplessness for purposes of manly resistance; but its

suppleness and its tact move the children of sterner climates to

admiration not unmingled with contempt. All those arts which are the

natural defence of the weak are more familiar to this subtle race than

to the Ionian of the time of Juvenal, or to the Jew of the dark ages.

What the horns are to the buffalo, what the paw is to the tiger, what

the sting is to the bee, what beauty, according to the old Greek song,

is to woman, deceit is to the Bengalee. Large promises, smooth excuses,

elaborate tissues of circumstantial falsehood, chicanery, perjury,

forgery, are the weapons, offensive and defensive, of the people of the

Lower Ganges. All those millions do not furnish one sepoy to the armies

of the Company. But as userers, as money-changers, as sharp legal

practitioners, no class of human beings can bear a comparison with

them. With all his softness, the Bengalee is by no means placable in his

enmities or prone to pity. The pertinacity with which he adheres to his

purposes yields only to the immediate pressure of fear. Nor does he

lack a certain kind of courage which is often wanting to his masters.

To inevitable evils he is sometimes found to oppose a passive fortitude,

such as the Stoics attributed to their ideal sage. An European warrior

who rushes on a battery of cannon with a loud hurrah, will sometimes

shriek under the surgeon’s knife, and fall in an agony of despair at the

sentence of death. But the Bengalee, who would see his country overrun,

his house laid in ashes, his children murdered or dishonoured, without

having the spirit to strike one blow, has yet been known to endure

torture with the firmness of Mucius, and to mount the scaffold with the

steady step and even pulse of Algernon Sydney.

In Nuncomar, the national character was strongly and with exaggeration

personified. The Company’s servants had repeatedly detected him in

the most criminal intrigues. On one occasion he brought a false charge

against another Hindoo, and tried to substantiate it by producing forged

documents. On another occasion it was discovered that, while professing

the strongest attachment to the English, he was engaged in several

conspiracies against them, and in particular that he was the medium of a

correspondence between the court of Delhi and the French authorities in

the Carnatic. For these and similar practices he had been long detained

in confinement. But his talents and influence had not only procured his

liberation, but had obtained for him a certain degree of consideration

even among the British rulers of his country.

Clive was extremely unwilling to place a Mussulman at the head of the

administration of Bengal. On the other hand, he could not bring himself

to confer immense power on a man to whom every sort of villainy had

repeatedly been brought home. Therefore, though the nabob, over whom

Nuncomar had by intrigue acquired great influence, begged that the

artful Hindoo might be intrusted with the government, Clive, after some

hesitation, decided honestly and wisely in favour of Mahommed Reza Khan.

When Hastings became Governor, Mahommed Reza Khan had held power seven

years. An infant son of Meer Jaffier was now nabob; and the guardianship

of the young prince’s person had been confided to the minister.

Nuncomar, stimulated at once by cupidity and malice, had been constantly

attempting to hurt the reputation of his successful rival. This was not

difficult. The revenues of Bengal, under the administration established

by Clive, did not yield such a surplus as had been anticipated by the

Company; for, at that time, the most absurd notions were entertained in

England respecting the wealth of India. Palaces of porphyry, hung with

the richest brocade, heaps of pearls and diamonds, vaults from which

pagodas and gold mohurs were measured out by the bushel, filled the

imagination even of men of business. Nobody seemed to be aware of what

nevertheless was most undoubtedly the truth, that India was a poorer

country than countries which in Europe are reckoned poor, than Ireland,

for example, or than Portugal. It was confidently believed by Lords of

the Treasury and members for the city that Bengal would not only

defray its own charges, but would afford an increased dividend to the

proprietors of India stock, and large relief to the English finances.

These absurd expectations were disappointed; and the Directors,

naturally enough, chose to attribute the disappointment rather to the

mismanagement of Mahommed Reza Khan than to their own ignorance of the

country intrusted to their care. They were confirmed in their error

by the agents of Nuncomar; for Nuncomar had agents even in Leadenhall

Street. Soon after Hastings reached Calcutta, he received a letter

addressed by the Court of Directors, not to the Council generally, but

to himself in particular. He was directed to remove Mahommed Reza Khan,

to arrest him together with all his family and all his partisans, and

to institute a strict inquiry into the whole administration of the

province. It was added that the Governor would do well to avail himself

of the assistance of Nuncomar in the investigation. The vices of

Nuncomar were acknowledged. But even from his vices, it was said, much

advantage might at such a conjuncture be derived; and, though he could

not safely be trusted, it might still be proper to encourage him by

hopes of reward.

The Governor bore no goodwill to Nuncomar. Many years before, they had

known each other at Moorshedabad; and then a quarrel had arisen between

them which all the authority of their superiors could hardly compose.

Widely as they differed in most points, they resembled each other in

this, that both were men of unforgiving natures. To Mahommed Reza Khan,

on the other hand, Hastings had no feelings of hostility. Nevertheless

he proceeded to execute the instructions of the Company with an

alacrity which he never showed, except when instructions were in perfect

conformity with his own views. He had, wisely as we think, determined to

get rid of the system of double government in Bengal. The orders of the

Directors furnished him with the means of effecting his purpose, and

dispensed him from the necessity of discussing the matter with his

Council. He took his measures with his usual vigour and dexterity.

At midnight, the palace of Mahommed Reza Khan at Moorshedabad was

surrounded by a battalion of sepoys. The Minister was roused from

his slumbers and informed that he was a prisoner. With the Mussulman

gravity, he bent his head and submitted himself to the will of God. He

fell not alone. A chief named Schitab Roy had been intrusted with the

government of Bahar. His valour and his attachment to the English had

more than once been signally proved. On that memorable day on which

the people of Patna saw from their walls the whole army of the Mogul

scattered by the little band of Captain Knox, the voice of the British

conquerors assigned the palm of gallantry to the brave Asiatic. “I

never,” said Knox, when he introduced Schitab Roy, covered with blood

and dust, to the English functionaries assembled in the factory, “I

never saw a native fight so before.” Schitab Roy was involved in the

ruin of Mahommed Reza Khan, was removed from office, and was placed

under arrest. The members of the Council received no intimation of these

measures till the prisoners were on their road to Calcutta.

The inquiry into the conduct of the minister was postponed on different

pretences. He was detained in an easy confinement during many months.

In the meantime, the great revolution which Hastings had planned was

carried into effect. The office of minister was abolished. The internal

administration was transferred to the servants of the Company. A system,

a very imperfect system, it is true, of civil and criminal justice,

under English superintendence, was established. The nabob was no longer

to have even an ostensible share in the government; but he was still to

receive a considerable annual allowance, and to be surrounded with the

state of sovereignty. As he was an infant, it was necessary to provide

guardians for his person and property. His person was intrusted to a

lady of his father’s harem, known by the name of the Munny Begum. The

office of treasurer of the household was bestowed on a son of Nuncomar,

named Goordas. Nuncomar’s services were wanted; yet he could not safely

be trusted with power; and Hastings thought it a masterstroke of policy

to reward the able and unprincipled parent by promoting the inoffensive

child.

The revolution completed, the double government dissolved, the Company

installed in the full sovereignty of Bengal, Hastings had no motive to

treat the late ministers with rigour. Their trial had been put off on

various pleas till the new organization was complete. They were then

brought before a committee, over which the Governor presided. Schitab

Roy was speedily acquitted with honour. A formal apology was made to him

for the restraint to which he had been subjected. All the Eastern marks

of respect were bestowed on him. He was clothed in a robe of state,

presented with jewels and with a richly harnessed elephant, and sent

back to his government at Patna. But his health had suffered from

confinement; his high spirit had been cruelly wounded; and soon after

his liberation he died of a broken heart.

The innocence of Mahommed Reza Khan was not so clearly established. But

the Governor was not disposed to deal harshly. After a long hearing, in

which Nuncomar appeared as the accuser, and displayed both the art and

the inveterate rancour which distinguished him, Hastings pronounced that

the charge had not been made out, and ordered the fallen minister to be

set at liberty.

Nuncomar had purposed to destroy the Mussulman administration, and

to rise on its ruin. Both his malevolence and his cupidity had been

disappointed. Hastings had made him a tool, had used him for the purpose

of accomplishing the transfer of the government from Moorshedabad to

Calcutta, from native to European hands. The rival, the enemy, so

long envied, so implacably persecuted, had been dismissed unhurt.

The situation so long and ardently desired had been abolished. It was

natural that the Governor should be from that time an object of the

most intense hatred to the vindictive Brahmin. As yet, however, it was

necessary to suppress such feelings. The time was coming when that long

animosity was to end in a desperate and deadly struggle.

In the meantime, Hastings was compelled to turn his attention to foreign

affairs. The object of his diplomacy was at this time simply to get

money. The finances of his government were in an embarrassed state, and

this embarrassment he was determined to relieve by some means, fair or

foul. The principle which directed all his dealings with his neighbours

is fully expressed by the old motto of one of the great predatory

families of Teviotdale, “Thou shalt want ere I want.” He seems to have

laid it down, as a fundamental proposition which could not be disputed,

that, when he had not as many lacs of rupees as the public service

required, he was to take them from anybody who had. One thing, indeed,

is to be said in excuse for him. The pressure applied to him by his

employers at home, was such as only the highest virtue could have

withstood, such as left him no choice except to commit great wrongs, or

to resign his high post, and with that post all his hopes of fortune and

distinction. The Directors, it is true, never enjoined or applauded any

crime. Far from it. Whoever examines their letters written at that

time, will find there many just and humane sentiments, many excellent

precepts, in short, an admirable code of political ethics. But every

exhortation is modified or nullified by a demand for money. “Govern

leniently, and send more money; practise strict justice and moderation

towards neighbouring powers, and send more money”--this is, in truth,

the sum of almost all the instructions that Hastings ever received from

home. Now these instructions, being interpreted, mean simply, “Be the

father and the oppressor of the people; be just and unjust, moderate and

rapacious.” The Directors dealt with India, as the Church, in the good

old times, dealt with a heretic. They delivered the victim over to the

executioners, with an earnest request that all possible tenderness

might be shown. We by no means accuse or suspect those who framed these

despatches of hypocrisy. It is probable that, writing fifteen thousand

miles from the place where their orders were to be carried into effect,

they never perceived the gross inconsistency of which they were guilty.

But the inconsistency was at once manifest to their vicegerent at

Calcutta, who, with an empty treasury, with an unpaid army, with his own

salary often in arrear, with deficient crops, with government tenants

daily running away, was called upon to remit home another half million

without fail. Hastings saw that it was absolutely necessary for him to

disregard either the moral discourses or the pecuniary requisitions

of his employers. Being forced to disobey them in something, he had to

consider what kind of disobedience they would most readily pardon;

and he correctly judged that the safest course would be to neglect the

sermons and to find the rupees.

A mind so fertile as his, and so little restrained by conscientious

scruples, speedily discovered several modes of relieving the financial

embarrassments of the Government. The allowance of the Nabob of Bengal

was reduced at a stroke from three hundred and twenty thousand pounds

a year to half that sum. The Company had bound itself to pay near three

hundred thousand pounds a year to the Great Mogul, as a mark of homage

for the provinces which he had intrusted to their care; and they had

ceded to him the districts of Corah and Allahabad. On the plea that

the Mogul was not really independent, but merely a tool in the hands of

others, Hastings determined to retract these concessions. He accordingly

declared that the English would pay no more tribute, and sent troops to

occupy Allahabad and Corah. The situation of these places was such, that

there would be little advantage and great expense in retaining them.

Hastings, who wanted money and not territory, determined to sell them. A

purchaser was not wanting. The rich province of Oude had, in the general

dissolution of the Mogul Empire, fallen to the share of the great

Mussulman house by which it is still governed. About twenty years ago,

this house, by the permission of the British Government, assumed the

royal title; but in the time of Warren Hastings such an assumption would

have been considered by the Mahommedans of India as a monstrous impiety.

The Prince of Oude, though he held the power, did not venture to use the

style of sovereignty. To the appellation of Nabob or Viceroy, he added

that of Vizier of the monarchy of Hindostan, just as in the last century

the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, though independent of the

Emperor, and often in arms against him, were proud to style themselves

his Grand Chamberlain and Grand Marshal. Sujah Dowlah, then Nabob

Vizier, was on excellent terms with the English. He had a large

treasure. Allahabad and Corah were so situated that they might be of use

to him and could be of none to the Company. The buyer and seller soon

came to an understanding; and the provinces which had been torn from the

Mogul were made over to the Government of Oude for about half a million

sterling.

But there was another matter still more important to be settled by the

Vizier and the Governor. The fate of a brave people was to be decided.

It was decided in a manner which has left a lasting stain on the fame of

Hastings and of England.

The people of Central Asia had always been to the inhabitants of India

what the warriors of the German forests were to the subjects of the

decaying monarchy of Rome. The dark, slender, and timid Hindoo shrank

from a conflict with the strong muscle and resolute spirit of the fair

race which dwelt beyond the passes. There is reason to believe that, at

a period anterior to the dawn of regular history, the people who spoke

the rich and flexible Sanskrit came from regions lying far beyond the

Hyphasis and the Hystaspes, and imposed their yoke on the children

of the soil. It is certain that, during the last ten centuries, a

succession of invaders descended from the west on Hindostan; nor was the

course of conquest ever turned back towards the setting sun, till that

memorable campaign in which the cross of Saint George was planted on the

walls of Ghizni.

The Emperors of Hindostan themselves came from the other side of the

great mountain ridge; and it had always been their practice to recruit

their army from the hardy and valiant race from which their own

illustrious house sprang. Among the military adventurers who were

allured to the Mogul standards from the neighbourhood of Cabul and

Candahar, were conspicuous several gallant bands, known by the name

of the Rohillas. Their services had been rewarded with large tracts

of land, fiefs of the spear, if we may use an expression drawn from

an analogous state of things, in that fertile plain through which the

Ramgunga flows from the snowy heights of Kumaon to join the Ganges.

In the general confusion which followed the death of Aurungzebe,

the warlike colony became virtually independent. The Rohillas were

distinguished from the other inhabitants of India by a peculiarly fair

complexion. They were more honourably distinguished by courage in war,

and by skill in the arts of peace. While anarchy raged from Lahore to

Cape Comorin, their little territory enjoyed the blessings of repose

under the guardianship of valour. Agriculture and commerce flourished

among them; nor were they negligent of rhetoric and poetry. Many persons

now living have heard aged men talk with regret of the golden days when

the Afghan princes ruled in the vale of Rohilcund.

Sujah Dowlah had set his heart on adding this rich district to his own

principality. Right, or show of right, he had absolutely none. His claim

was in no respect better founded than that of Catherine to Poland, or

that of the Bonaparte family to Spain. The Rohillas held their country

by exactly the same title by which he held his, and had governed their

country far better than his had ever been governed. Nor were they a

people whom it was perfectly safe to attack. Their land was indeed an

open plain destitute of natural defences; but their veins were full of

the high blood of Afghanistan. As soldiers, they had not the steadiness

which is seldom found except in company with strict discipline; but

their impetuous valour had been proved on many fields of battle. It was

said that their chiefs, when united by common peril, could bring eighty

thousand men into the field. Sujah Dowlah had himself seen them fight,

and wisely shrank from a conflict with them. There was in India one

army, and only one, against which even those proud Caucasian tribes

could not stand. It had been abundantly proved that neither tenfold

odds, nor the martial ardour of the boldest Asiatic nations, could avail

ought against English science and resolution. Was it possible to induce

the Governor of Bengal to let out to hire the irresistible energies

of the imperial people, the skill against which the ablest chiefs of

Hindostan were helpless as infants, the discipline which had so often

triumphed over the frantic struggles of fanaticism and despair, the

unconquerable British courage which is never so sedate and stubborn as

towards the close of a doubtful and murderous day?

This was what the Nabob Vizier asked, and what Hastings granted. A

bargain was soon struck. Each of the negotiators had what the other

wanted. Hastings was in need of funds to carry on the government of

Bengal, and to send remittances to London; and Sujah Dowlah had an ample

revenue. Sujah Dowlah was bent on subjugating the Rohillas; and Hastings

had at his disposal the only force by which the Rohillas could be

subjugated. It was agreed that an English army should be lent to

the Nabob Vizier, and that, for the loan, he should pay four hundred

thousand pounds sterling, besides defraying all the charge of the troops

while employed in his service.

“I really cannot see,” says Mr. Gleig, “upon what grounds, either of

political or moral justice, this proposition deserves to be stigmatised

as infamous.” If we understand the meaning of words, it is infamous

to commit a wicked action for hire, and it is wicked to engage in war

without provocation. In this particular war, scarcely one aggravating

circumstance was wanting. The object of the Rohilla war was this, to

deprive a large population, who had never done us the least harm, of

a good government, and to place them, against their will, under an

execrably bad one. Nay, even this is not all. England now descended far

below the level even of those petty German princes who, about the same

time, sold us troops to fight the Americans. The hussar-mongers of Hesse

and Anspach had at least the assurance that the expeditions on which

their soldiers were to be employed would be conducted in conformity with

the humane rules of civilised warfare. Was the Rohilla war likely to be

so conducted? Did the Governor stipulate that it should be so conducted?

He well knew what Indian warfare was. He well knew that the power

which he covenanted to put into Sujah Dowlah’s hands would, in all

probability, be atrociously abused; and he required no guarantee, no

promise, that it should not be so abused. He did not even reserve to

himself the right of withdrawing his aid in case of abuse, however

gross. We are almost ashamed to notice Major Scott’s plea, that Hastings

was justified in letting out English troops to slaughter the Rohillas,

because the Rohillas were not of Indian race, but a colony from a

distant country. What were the English themselves? Was it for them to

proclaim a crusade for the expulsion of all intruders from the countries

watered by the Ganges? Did it lie in their mouths to contend that a

foreign settler who establishes an empire in India is a caput lupinum?

What would they have said if any other power had, on such a ground,

attacked Madras or Calcutta, without the slightest provocation? Such a

defence was wanting to make the infamy of the transaction complete. The

atrocity of the crime, and the hypocrisy of the apology, are worthy of

each other.

One of the three brigades of which the Bengal army consisted was sent

under Colonel Champion to join Sujah Dowlah’s forces. The Rohillas

expostulated, entreated, offered a large ransom, but in vain. They then

resolved to defend themselves to the last. A bloody battle was fought.

“The enemy,” says Colonel Champion, “gave proof of a good share of

military knowledge; and it is impossible to describe a more obstinate

firmness of resolution than they displayed.” The dastardly sovereign of

Oude fled from the field. The English were left unsupported; but their

fire and their charge were irresistible. It was not, however, till the

most distinguished chiefs had fallen, fighting bravely at the head of

their troops, that the Rohilla ranks gave way. Then the Nabob Vizier and

his rabble made their appearance, and hastened to plunder the camp of

the valiant enemies whom they had never dared to look in the face. The

soldiers of the Company, trained in an exact discipline, kept unbroken

order, while the tents were pillaged by these worthless allies. But many

voices were heard to exclaim, “We have had all the fighting, and those

rogues are to have all the profit.”

Then the horrors of Indian war were let loose on the fair valleys and

cities of Rohilcund. The whole country was in a blaze. More than a

hundred thousand people fled from their homes to pestilential jungles,

preferring famine, and fever, and the haunts of tigers, to the tyranny

of him, to whom an English and a Christian government had, for shameful

lucre, sold their substance, and their blood, and the honour of their

wives and daughters. Colonel Champion remonstrated with the Nabob

Vizier, and sent strong representations to Fort William; but the

Governor had made no conditions as to the mode in which the war was

to be carried on. He had troubled himself about nothing, but his

forty lacs; and, though he might disapprove of Sujah Dowlah’s wanton

barbarity, he did not think himself entitled to interfere, except by

offering advice. This delicacy excites the admiration of the biographer.

“Mr. Hastings,” he says, “could not himself dictate to the Nabob, nor

permit the commander of the Company’s troops to dictate how the war was

to be carried on.” No, to be sure. Mr. Hastings had only to put down

by main force the brave struggles of innocent men fighting for their

liberty. Their military resistance crushed his duties ended; and he

had then only to fold his arms and look on, while their villages were

burned, their children butchered, and their women violated. Will Mr.

Gleig seriously maintain this opinion? Is any rule more plain than this,

that whoever voluntarily gives to another irresistible power over human

beings is bound to take order that such power shall not be barbarously

abused? But we beg pardon of our readers for arguing a point so clear.

We hasten to the end of this sad and disgraceful story. The war ceased.

The finest population in India was subjected to a greedy, cowardly,

cruel tyrant. Commerce and agriculture languished. The rich province

which had tempted the cupidity of Sujah Dowlah became the most miserable

part even of his miserable dominions. Yet is the injured nation not

extinct. At long intervals gleams of its ancient spirit have flashed

forth; and even at this day, valour, and self-respect, and a chivalrous

feeling rare among Asiatics, and a bitter remembrance of the great crime

of England, distinguish that noble Afghan race. To this day they are

regarded as the best of all sepoys at the cold steel; and it was

very recently remarked, by one who had enjoyed great opportunities of

observation, that the only natives of India to whom the word “gentleman”

can with perfect propriety be applied, are to be found among the

Rohillas.

Whatever we may think of the morality of Hastings, it cannot be denied

that the financial results of his policy did honour to his talents.

In less than two years after he assumed the government, he had without

imposing any additional burdens on the people subject to his authority,

added about four hundred and fifty thousand pounds to the annual income

of the Company, besides procuring about a million in ready money. He

had also relieved the finances of Bengal from military expenditure,

amounting to near a quarter of a million a year, and had thrown that

charge on the Nabob of Oude. There can be no doubt that this was a

result which, if it had been obtained by honest means, would have

entitled him to the warmest gratitude of his country, and which, by

whatever means obtained, proved that he possessed great talents for

administration.

In the meantime, Parliament had been engaged in long and grave

discussions on Asiatic affairs. The ministry of Lord North, in the

session of 1773, introduced a measure which made a considerable change

in the constitution of the Indian Government. This law, known by the

name of the Regulating Act, provided that the presidency of Bengal

should exercise a control over the other possessions of the Company;

that the chief of that presidency should be styled Governor-General;

that he should be assisted by four Councillors; and that a supreme court

of judicature, consisting of a chief justice and three inferior judges,

should be established at Calcutta. This court was made independent of

the Governor-General and Council, and was intrusted with a civil and

criminal jurisdiction of immense and, at the same time, of undefined

extent.

The Governor-General and Councillors were named in the Act, and were

to hold their situations for five years. Hastings was to be the first

Governor-General. One of the four new Councillors, Mr. Barwell, an

experienced servant of the Company, was then in India. The other three,

General Clavering, Mr. Monson, and Mr. Francis, were sent out from

England.

The ablest of the new Councillors was, beyond all doubt, Philip Francis.

His acknowledged compositions prove that he possessed considerable

eloquence and information. Several years passed in the public offices

had formed him to habits of business. His enemies have never denied that

he had a fearless and manly spirit; and his friends, we are afraid, must

acknowledge that his estimate of himself was extravagantly high,

that his temper was irritable, that his deportment was often rude

and petulant, and that his hatred was of intense bitterness and long

duration.

It is scarcely possible to mention this eminent man without adverting

for a moment to the question which his name at once suggests to every

mind. Was he the author of the Letters Of Junius? Our own firm belief is

that he was. The evidence is, we think, such as would support a verdict

in a civil, nay, in a criminal proceeding. The handwriting of Junius is

the very peculiar handwriting of Francis, slightly disguised. As to the

position, pursuits, and connections of Junius, the following are the

most important facts which can be considered as clearly proved: first,

that he was acquainted with the technical forms of the Secretary of

State’s office; secondly, that he was intimately acquainted with the

business of the War Office; thirdly, that he, during the year 1770,

attended debates in the House of Lords, and took notes of speeches,

particularly of the speeches of Lord Chatham; fourthly, that he

bitterly resented the appointment of Mr. Chamier to the place of Deputy

Secretary-at-War; fifthly, that he was bound by some strong tie to the

first Lord Holland. Now, Francis passed some years in the Secretary of

State’s office. He was subsequently Chief Clerk of the War Office. He

repeatedly mentioned that he had himself, in 1770, heard speeches of

Lord Chatham; and some of these speeches were actually printed from his

notes. He resigned his clerkship at the War Office from resentment at

the appointment of Mr. Chamier. It was by Lord Holland that he was first

introduced into the public service. Now, here are five marks, all of

which ought to be found in Junius. They are all five found in Francis.

We do not believe that more than two of them can be found in any other

person whatever. If this argument does not settle the question, there is

an end of all reasoning on circumstantial evidence.

The internal evidence seems to us to point the same way. The style

of Francis bears a strong resemblance to that of Junius; nor are

we disposed to admit, what is generally taken for granted, that the

acknowledged compositions of Francis are very decidedly inferior to the

anonymous letters. The argument from inferiority, at all events, is one

which may be urged with at least equal force against every claimant

that has ever been mentioned, with the single exception of Burke; and

it would be a waste of time to prove that Burke was not Junius. And what

conclusion, after all, can be drawn from mere inferiority? Every writer

must produce his best work; and the interval between his best work and

his second best work may be very wide indeed. Nobody will say that the

best letters of Junius are more decidedly superior to the acknowledged

works of Francis than three or four of Corneille’s tragedies to the

rest, than three or four of Ben Jonson’s comedies to the rest, than the

Pilgrim’s Progress to the other works of Bunyan, than Don Quixote to the

other works of Cervantes. Nay, it is certain that Junius, whoever he may

have been, was a most unequal writer. To go no further than the letters

which bear the signature of Junius; the letter to the king, and the

letters to Horne Tooke, have little in common, except the asperity; and

asperity was an ingredient seldom wanting either in the writings or in

the speeches of Francis.

Indeed one of the strongest reasons for believing that Francis

was Junius is the moral resemblance between the two men. It is not

difficult, from the letters which, under various signatures, are known

to have been written by Junius, and from his dealings with Woodfall

and others, to form a tolerably correct notion of his character. He was

clearly a man not destitute of real patriotism and magnanimity, a man

whose vices were not of a sordid kind. But he must also have been a man

in the highest degree arrogant and insolent, a man prone to malevolence,

and prone to the error of mistaking his malevolence for public virtue.

“Doest thou well to be angry?” was the question asked in old time of

the Hebrew prophet. And he answered, “I do well.” This was evidently

the temper of Junius; and to this cause we attribute the savage cruelty

which disgraces several of his letters. No man is so merciless as he

who, under a strong self-delusion, confounds his antipathies with his

duties. It may be added that Junius, though allied with the democratic

party by common enmities, was the very opposite of a democratic

politician. While attacking individuals with a ferocity which

perpetually violated all the laws of literary warfare, he regarded the

most defective parts of old institutions with a respect amounting

to pedantry, pleaded the cause of Old Sarum with fervour, and

contemptuously told the capitalists of Manchester and Leeds that,

if they wanted votes, they might buy land and become freeholders of

Lancashire and Yorkshire. All this, we believe, might stand, with

scarcely any change, for a character of Philip Francis.

It is not strange that the great anonymous writer should have been

willing at that time to leave the country which had been so powerfully

stirred by his eloquence. Everything had gone against him. That

party which he clearly preferred to every other, the party of George

Grenville, had been scattered by the death of its chief; and Lord

Suffolk had led the greater part of it over to the ministerial benches.

The ferment produced by the Middlesex election had gone down. Every

faction must have been alike an object of aversion to Junius. His

opinions on domestic affairs separated him from the Ministry;

his opinions on colonial affairs from the Opposition. Under such

circumstances, he had thrown down his pen in misanthropical despair. His

farewell letter to Woodfall bears date the nineteenth of January, 1773.

In that letter, he declared that he must be an idiot to write again;

that he had meant well by the cause and the public; that both were given

up; that there were not ten men who would act steadily together on any

question. “But it is all alike,” he added, “vile and contemptible. You

have never flinched that I know of; and I shall always rejoice to hear

of your prosperity.” These were the last words of Junius. In a year from

that time, Philip Francis was on his voyage to Bengal.

With the three new Councillors came out the judges of the Supreme Court.

The chief justice was Sir Elijah Impey. He was an old acquaintance

of Hastings; and it is probable that the Governor-General, if he had

searched through all the inns of court, could not have found an equally

serviceable tool. But the members of Council were by no means in an

obsequious mood. Hastings greatly disliked the new form of government,

and had no very high opinion of his coadjutors. They had heard of this,

and were disposed to be suspicious and punctilious. When men are in such

a frame of mind, any trifle is sufficient to give occasion for dispute.

The members of Council expected a salute of twenty-one guns from the

batteries of Fort William. Hastings allowed them only seventeen. They

landed in ill-humour. The first civilities were exchanged with cold

reserve. On the morrow commenced that long quarrel which, after

distracting British India, was renewed in England, and in which all the

most eminent statesmen and orators of the age took active part on one or

the other side.

Hastings was supported by Barwell. They had not always been friends. But

the arrival of the new members of Council from England naturally had the

effect of uniting the old servants of the Company. Clavering, Monson,

and Francis formed the majority. They instantly wrested the government

out of the hands of Hastings, condemned, certainly not without justice,

his late dealings with the Nabob Vizier, recalled the English agent

from Oude, and sent thither a creature of their own, ordered the brigade

which had conquered the unhappy Rohillas to return to the Company’s

territories, and instituted a severe inquiry into the conduct of the

war. Next, in spite of the Governor-General’s remonstrances, they

proceeded to exercise, in the most indiscreet manner, their new

authority over the subordinate presidencies; threw all the affairs

of Bombay into confusion; and interfered, with an incredible union

of rashness and feebleness, in the intestine disputes of the Mahratta

Government. At the same time, they fell on the internal administration

of Bengal, and attacked the whole fiscal and judicial system, a system

which was undoubtedly defective, but which it was very improbable that

gentlemen fresh from England would be competent to amend. The effect

of their reforms was that all protection to life and property was

withdrawn, and that gangs of robbers plundered and slaughtered with

impunity in the very suburbs of Calcutta. Hastings continued to live

in the Government-house, and to draw the salary of Governor-General. He

continued even to take the lead at the council-board in the transaction

of ordinary business; for his opponents could not but feel that he knew

much of which they were ignorant, and that he decided, both surely

and speedily, many questions which to them would have been hopelessly

puzzling. But the higher powers of government and the most valuable

patronage had been taken from him.

The natives soon found this out. They considered him as a fallen man;

and they acted after their kind. Some of our readers may have seen, in

India, a cloud of crows pecking a sick vulture to death, no bad type of

what happens in that country, as often as fortune deserts one who has

been great and dreaded. In an instant, all the sycophants who had lately

been ready to lie for him, to forge for him, to pandar for him, to

poison for him, hasten to purchase the favour of his victorious enemies

by accusing him. An Indian government has only to let it be understood

that it wishes a particular man to be ruined; and, in twenty-four hours,

it will be furnished with grave charges, supported by depositions

so full and circumstantial that any person unaccustomed to Asiatic

mendacity would regard them as decisive. It is well if the signature

of the destined victim is not counterfeited at the foot of some

illegal compact, and if some treasonable paper is not slipped into a

hiding-place in his house. Hastings was now regarded as helpless. The

power to make or mar the fortune of every man in Bengal had passed, as

it seemed, into the hands of the new Councillors. Immediately charges

against the Governor-General began to pour in. They were eagerly

welcomed by the majority, who, to do them justice, were men of too much

honour knowingly to countenance false accusations, but who were not

sufficiently acquainted with the East to be aware that, in that part of

the world, a very little encouragement from power will call forth, in a

week, more Oateses, and Bedloes, and Dangerfields, than Westminster Hall

sees in a century.

It would have been strange indeed if, at such a juncture, Nuncomar had

remained quiet. That bad man was stimulated at once by malignity, by

avarice, and by ambition. Now was the time to be avenged on his old

enemy, to wreak a grudge of seventeen years, to establish himself in the

favour of the majority of the Council, to become the greatest native in

Bengal. From the time of the arrival of the new Councillors he had paid

the most marked court to them, and had in consequence been excluded,

with all indignity, from the Government-house. He now put into the hands

of Francis with great ceremony, a paper, containing several charges of

the most serious description. By this document Hastings was accused

of putting offices up to sale, and of receiving bribes for suffering

offenders to escape. In particular, it was alleged that Mahommed Reza

Khan had been dismissed with impunity, in consideration of a great sum

paid to the Governor-General.

Francis read the paper in Council. A violent altercation followed.

Hastings complained in bitter terms of the way in which he was treated,

spoke with contempt of Nuncomar and of Nuncomar’s accusation, and denied

the right of the Council to sit in judgment on the Governor. At the next

meeting of the Board, another communication from Nuncomar was produced.

He requested that he might be permitted to attend the Council, and that

he might be heard in support of his assertions. Another tempestuous

debate took place. The Governor-General maintained that the council-room

was not a proper place for such an investigation; that from persons who

were heated by daily conflict with him he could not expect the fairness

of judges; and that he could not, without betraying the dignity of his

post, submit to be confronted with such a man as Nuncomar. The majority,

however, resolved to go into the charges. Hastings rose, declared the

sitting at an end, and left the room, followed by Barwell. The other

members kept their seats, voted themselves a council, put Clavering

in the chair, and ordered Nuncomar to be called in. Nuncomar not only

adhered to the original charges, but, after the fashion of the East,

produced a large supplement. He stated that Hastings had received

a great sum for appointing Rajah Goordas treasurer of the Nabob’s

household, and for committing the care of his Highness’s person to the

Munny Begum. He put in a letter purporting to bear the seal of the Munny

Begum, for the purpose of establishing the truth of his story. The

seal, whether forged, as Hastings affirmed, or genuine, as we are rather

inclined to believe, proved nothing. Nuncomar, as everybody knows who

knows India, had only to tell the Munny Begum that such a letter would

give pleasure to the majority of the Council, in order to procure her

attestation. The majority, however, voted that the charge was made out;

that Hastings had corruptly received between thirty and forty thousand

pounds; and that he ought to be compelled to refund.

The general feeling among the English in Bengal was strongly in favour

of the Governor-General. In talents for business, in knowledge of the

country, in general courtesy of demeanour, he was decidedly superior to

his persecutors. The servants of the Company were naturally disposed

to side with the most distinguished member of their own body against

a clerk from the War Office, who, profoundly ignorant of the native

language, and of the native character, took on himself to regulate every

department of the administration. Hastings, however, in spite of the

general sympathy of his countrymen, was in a most painful situation.

There was still an appeal to higher authority in England. If that

authority took part with his enemies, nothing was left to him but to

throw up his office. He accordingly placed his resignation in the hands

of his agent in London, Colonel Macleane. But Macleane was instructed

not to produce the resignation, unless it should be fully ascertained

that the feeling at the India House was adverse to the Governor-General.

The triumph of Nuncomar seemed to be complete. He held a daily levee, to

which his countrymen resorted in crowds, and to which on one occasion,

the majority of the Council condescended to repair. His house was

an office for the purpose of receiving charges against the

Governor-General. It was said that, partly by threats, and partly by

wheedling, the villainous Brahmin had induced many of the wealthiest

men of the province to send in complaints. But he was playing a perilous

game. It was not safe to drive to despair a man of such resources and

of such determination as Hastings. Nuncomar, with all his acuteness, did

not understand the nature of the institutions under which he lived. He

saw that he had with him the majority of the body which made treaties,

gave places, raised taxes. The separation between political and judicial

functions was a thing of which he had no conception. It bad probably

never occurred to him that there was in Bengal an authority perfectly

independent of the Council, an authority which could protect one whom

the Council wished to destroy and send to the gibbet one whom the

Council wished to protect. Yet such was the fact. The Supreme Court

was, within the sphere of its own duties, altogether independent of

the Government. Hastings, with his usual sagacity, had seen how much

advantage he might derive from possessing himself of this stronghold;

and he had acted accordingly. The judges, especially the Chief Justice,

were hostile to the majority of the Council. The time had now come for

putting this formidable machinery into action.

On a sudden, Calcutta was astounded by the news that Nuncomar had been

taken up on a charge of felony, committed and thrown into the common

gaol. The crime imputed to him was that six years before he had forged a

bond. The ostensible prosecutor was a native. But it was then, and still

is, the opinion of everybody, idiots and biographers excepted, that

Hastings was the real mover in the business.

The rage of the majority rose to the highest point. They protested

against the proceedings of the Supreme Court, and sent several urgent

messages to the judges, demanding that Nuncomar should be admitted to

bail. The Judges returned haughty and resolute answers. All that the

Council could do was to heap honours and emoluments on the family of

Nuncomar; and this they did. In the meantime the assizes commenced; a

true bill was found; and Nuncomar was brought before Sir Elijah Impey

and a jury composed of Englishmen. A great quantity of contradictory

swearing, and the necessity of having every word of the evidence

interpreted, protracted the trial to a most unusual length. At last

a verdict of guilty was returned, and the Chief Justice pronounced

sentence of death on the prisoner.

That Impey ought to have respited Nuncomar we hold to be perfectly

clear. Whether the whole proceeding was not illegal, is a question. But

it is certain, that whatever may have been, according to technical rules

of construction, the effect of the statute under which the trial took

place, it was most unjust to hang a Hindoo for forgery. The law

which made forgery capital in England was passed without the smallest

reference to the state of society in India. It was unknown to the

natives of India. It had never been put in execution among them,

certainly not for want of delinquents. It was in the highest degree

shocking to all their notions. They were not accustomed to the

distinction which many circumstances, peculiar to our own state

of society, have led us to make between forgery and other kinds of

cheating. The counterfeiting of a seal was, in their estimation, a

common act of swindling; nor had it ever crossed their minds that it

was to be punished as severely as gang-robbery or assassination. A

just judge would, beyond all doubt, have reserved the case for the

consideration of the sovereign. But Impey would not hear of mercy or

delay.

The excitement among all classes was great. Francis and Francis’s few

English adherents described the Governor-General and the Chief justice

as the worst of murderers. Clavering, it was said, swore that even at

the foot of the gallows, Nuncomar should be rescued. The bulk of the

European society, though strongly attached to the Governor-General,

could not but feel compassion for a man who, with all his crimes, had

so long filled so large a space in their sight, who had been great and

powerful before the British empire in India began to exist, and to whom,

in the old times, governors and members of Council, then mere commercial

factors, had paid court for protection. The feeling of the Hindoos was

infinitely stronger. They were, indeed, not a people to strike one

blow for their countryman. But his sentence filled them with sorrow and

dismay. Tried even by their low standard of morality, he was a bad man.

But bad as he was, he was the head of their race and religion, a Brahmin

of the Brahmins. He had inherited the purest and highest caste. He had

practised with the greatest punctuality all those ceremonies to which

the superstitious Bengalees ascribe far more importance than to the

correct discharge of the social duties. They felt, therefore, as a

devout Catholic in the dark ages would have felt, at seeing a prelate of

the highest dignity sent to the gallows by a secular tribunal. According

to their old national laws, a Brahmin could not be put to death for any

crime whatever. And the crime for which Nuncomar was about to die was

regarded by them in much the same light in which the selling of an

unsound horse, for a sound price, is regarded by a Yorkshire jockey.

The Mussulmans alone appear to have seen with exultation the fate of

the powerful Hindoo, who had attempted to rise by means of the ruin

of Mahommed Reza Khan. The Mahommedan historian of those times takes

delight in aggravating the charge. He assures us that in Nuncomar’s

house a casket was found containing counterfeits of the seals of all

the richest men of the province. We have never fallen in with any other

authority for this story, which in itself is by no means improbable.

The day drew near; and Nuncomar prepared himself to die with that quiet

fortitude with which the Bengalee, so effeminately timid in personal

conflict, often encounters calamities for which there is no remedy.

The sheriff, with the humanity which is seldom wanting in an English

gentleman, visited the prisoner on the eve of the execution, and assured

him that no indulgence, consistent with the law, should be refused

to him. Nuncomar expressed his gratitude with great politeness and

unaltered composure. Not a muscle of his face moved. No a sigh broke

from him. He put his finger to his forehead, and calmly said that fate

would have its way, and that there was no resisting the pleasure of God.

He sent his compliments to Francis, Clavering, and Monson, and charged

them to protect Rajah Goordas, who was about to become the head of the

Brahmins of Bengal. The sheriff withdrew, greatly agitated by what had

passed, and Nuncomar sat composedly down to write notes and examine

accounts.

The next morning, before the sun was in his power, an immense concourse

assembled round the place where the gallows had been set up. Grief and

horror were on every face; yet to the last the multitude could hardly

believe that the English really purposed to take the life of the great

Brahmin. At length the mournful procession came through the crowd.

Nuncomar sat up in his palanquin, and looked round him with unaltered

serenity. He had just parted from those who were most nearly connected

with him. Their cries and contortions had appalled the European

ministers of justice, but had not produced the smallest effect on the

iron stoicism of the prisoner. The only anxiety which he expressed was

that men of his own priestly caste might be in attendance to take charge

of his corpse. He again desired to be remembered to his friends in the

Council, mounted the scaffold with firmness, and gave the signal to the

executioner. The moment that the drop fell, a howl of sorrow and despair

rose from the innumerable spectators. Hundreds turned away their faces

from the polluting sight, fled with loud wailings towards the Hoogley,

and plunged into its holy waters, as if to purify themselves from the

guilt of having looked on such a crime. These feelings were not confined

to Calcutta. The whole province was greatly excited; and the population

of Dacca, in particular, gave strong signs of grief and dismay.

Of Impey’s conduct it is impossible to speak too severely. We have

already said that, in our opinion, he acted unjustly in refusing to

respite Nuncomar. No rational man can doubt that he took this course in

order to gratify the Governor-General. If we had ever had any doubts on

that point, they would have been dispelled by a letter which Mr. Gleig

has published. Hastings, three or four years later, described Impey as

the man “to whose support he was at one time indebted for the safety of

his fortune, honour, and reputation.” These strong words can refer only

to the case of Nuncomar; and they must mean that Impey hanged Nuncomar

in order to support Hastings. It is, therefore, our deliberate opinion

that Impey, sitting as a judge, put a man unjustly to death in order to

serve a political purpose.