But we look on the conduct of Hastings in a somewhat different light.

He was struggling for fortune, honour, liberty, all that makes life

valuable. He was beset by rancorous and unprincipled enemies. From his

colleagues he could expect no justice. He cannot be blamed for wishing

to crush his accusers. He was indeed bound to use only legitimate means

for that end. But it was not strange that he should have thought any

means legitimate which were pronounced legitimate by the sages of

the law, by men whose peculiar duty it was to deal justly between

adversaries, and whose education might be supposed to have peculiarly

qualified them for the discharge of that duty. Nobody demands from

a party the unbending equity of a judge. The reason that judges are

appointed is, that even a good man cannot be trusted to decide a cause

in which he is himself concerned. Not a day passes on which an honest

prosecutor does not ask for what none but a dishonest tribunal would

grant. It is too much to expect that any man, when his dearest interests

are at stake, and his strongest passions excited, will, as against

himself, be more just than the sworn dispensers of justice. To take an

analogous case from the history of our own island; suppose that Lord

Stafford, when in the Tower on suspicion of being concerned in the

Popish plot, had been apprised that Titus Oates had done something which

might, by a questionable construction, be brought under the head of

felony. Should we severely blame Lord Stafford, in the supposed case,

for causing a prosecution to be instituted, for furnishing funds, for

using all his influence to intercept the mercy of the Crown? We think

not. If a judge, indeed, from favour to the Catholic lords, were to

strain the law in order to hang Oates, such a judge would richly deserve

impeachment. But it does not appear to us that the Catholic lord,

by bringing the case before the judge for decision, would materially

overstep the limits of a just self-defence.

While, therefore, we have not the least doubt that this memorable

execution is to be attributed to Hastings, we doubt whether it can with

justice be reckoned among his crimes. That his conduct was dictated by

a profound policy is evident. He was in a minority in Council. It

was possible that he might long be in a minority. He knew the native

character well. He knew in what abundance accusations are certain to

flow in against the most innocent inhabitant of India who is under the

frown of power. There was not in the whole black population of Bengal a

placeholder, a place-hunter, a government tenant, who did not think

that he might better himself by sending up a deposition against the

Governor-General. Under these circumstances, the persecuted statesman

resolved to teach the whole crew of accusers and witnesses, that, though

in a minority at the council-board, he was still to be feared. The

lesson which he gave then was indeed a lesson not to be forgotten. The

head of the combination which had been formed against him, the richest,

the most powerful, the most artful of the Hindoos, distinguished by

the favour of those who then held the government, fenced round by the

superstitious reverence of millions, was hanged in broad day before many

thousands of people. Everything that could make the warning impressive,

dignity in the sufferer, solemnity in the proceeding, was found in

this case. The helpless rage and vain struggles of the Council made the

triumph more signal. From that moment the conviction of every native was

that it was safer to take the part of Hastings in a minority than that

of Francis in a majority, and that he who was so venturous as to join

in running down the Governor-General might chance, in the phrase of the

Eastern poet, to find a tiger, while beating the jungle for a deer. The

voices of a thousand informers were silenced in an instant. From that

time, whatever difficulties Hastings might have to encounter, he was

never molested by accusations from natives of India.

It is a remarkable circumstance that one of the letters of Hastings to

Dr. Johnson bears date a very few hours after the death of Nuncomar.

While the whole settlement was in commotion, while a mighty and ancient

priesthood were weeping over the remains of their chief, the conqueror

in that deadly grapple sat down, with characteristic self-possession to

write about the Tour to the Hebrides, Jones’s Persian Grammar, and the

history, traditions, arts, and natural productions of India.

In the meantime, intelligence of the Rohilla war, and of the first

disputes between Hastings and his colleagues, had reached London. The

Directors took part with the majority, and sent out a letter filled with

severe reflections on the conduct of Hastings. They condemned, in strong

but just terms, the iniquity of undertaking offensive wars merely

for the sake of pecuniary advantage. But they utterly forgot that, if

Hastings had by illicit means obtained pecuniary advantages, he had

done so, not for his own benefit, but in order to meet their demands. To

enjoin honesty, and to insist on having what could not be honestly got,

was then the constant practice of the Company. As Lady Macbeth says of

her husband, they “would not play false, and yet would wrongly win.”

The Regulating Act, by which Hastings had been appointed

Governor-General for five years, empowered the Crown to remove him on

an address from the Company. Lord North was desirous to procure such an

address. The three members of Council who had been sent out from England

were men of his own choice. General Clavering, in particular, was

supported by a large parliamentary connection, such as no Cabinet could

be inclined to disoblige. The wish of the minister was to displace

Hastings, and to put Clavering at the head of the Government. In the

Court of Directors parties were very nearly balanced. Eleven voted

against Hastings; ten for him. The Court of Proprietors was then

convened. The great sale-room presented a singular appearance. Letters

had been sent by the Secretary of the Treasury, exhorting all the

supporters of Government who held India stock to be in attendance. Lord

Sandwich marshalled the friends of the administration with his usual

dexterity and alertness. Fifty peers and privy councillors, seldom

seen so far eastward, we counted in the crowd. The debate lasted till

midnight. The opponents of Hastings had a small superiority on the

division; but a ballot was demanded; and the result was that the

Governor-General triumphed by a majority of above a hundred votes over

the combined efforts of the Directors and the Cabinet. The ministers

were greatly exasperated by this defeat. Even Lord North lost his

temper, no ordinary occurrence with him, and threatened to convoke

Parliament before Christmas, and to bring in a bill for depriving

the Company of all political power, and for restricting it to its old

business of trading in silks and teas.

Colonel Macleane, who through all this conflict had zealously supported

the cause of Hastings, now thought that his employer was in imminent

danger of being turned out branded with parliamentary censure, perhaps

prosecuted. The opinion of the Crown lawyers had already been taken

respecting some parts of the Governor-General’s conduct. It seemed to

be high time to think of securing an honourable retreat. Under these

circumstances, Macleane thought himself justified in producing the

resignation with which he had been intrusted. The instrument was not in

very accurate form; but the Directors were too eager to be scrupulous.

They accepted the resignation, fixed on Mr. Wheler, one of their own

body to succeed Hastings, and sent out orders that General Clavering,

as senior member of Council, should exercise the functions of

Governor-General till Mr. Wheler should arrive.

But, while these things were passing in England, a great change had

taken place in Bengal. Monson was no more. Only four members of the

Government were left. Clavering and Francis were on one side, Barwell

and the Governor-General on the other; and the Governor-General had the

casting vote. Hastings, who had been during two years destitute of all

power and patronage, became at once absolute. He instantly proceeded

to retaliate on his adversaries. Their measures were reversed: their

creatures were displaced. A new valuation of the lands of Bengal, for

the purposes of taxation, was ordered: and it was provided that the

whole inquiry should be conducted by the Governor-General, and that all

the letters relating to it should run in his name. He began, at the same

time, to revolve vast plans of conquest and dominion, plans which he

lived to see realised, though not by himself. His project was to form

subsidiary alliances with the native princes, particularly with those of

Oude and Berar, and thus to make Britain the paramount power in India.

While he was meditating these great designs, arrived the intelligence

that he had ceased to be Governor-General, that his resignation had been

accepted, that Wheler was coming out immediately, and that, till Wheler

arrived, the chair was to be filled by Clavering.

Had Hastings still been in a minority, he would probably have retired

without a struggle; but he was now the real master of British India,

and he was not disposed to quit his high place. He asserted that he

had never given any instructions which could warrant the steps taken at

home. What his instructions had been, he owned he had forgotten. If he

had kept a copy of them he had mislaid it. But he was certain that he

had repeatedly declared to the Directors that he would not resign. He

could not see how the court possessed of that declaration from himself,

could receive his resignation from the doubtful hands of an agent. If

the resignation were invalid, all the proceedings which were founded on

that resignation were null, and Hastings was still Governor-General.

He afterwards affirmed that, though his agents had not acted in

conformity with his instructions, he would nevertheless have held

himself bound by their acts, if Clavering had not attempted to seize the

supreme power by violence. Whether this assertion were or were not true,

it cannot be doubted that the imprudence of Clavering gave Hastings

an advantage. The General sent for the keys of the fort and of the

treasury, took possession of the records, and held a council at which

Francis attended. Hastings took the chair in another apartment, and

Barwell sat with him. Each of the two parties had a plausible show of

right. There was no authority entitled to their obedience within fifteen

thousand miles. It seemed that there remained no way of settling the

dispute except an appeal to arms; and from such an appeal Hastings,

confident of his influence over his countrymen in India, was not

inclined to shrink. He directed the officers of the garrison at Fort

William and of all the neighbouring stations to obey no orders but his.

At the same time, with admirable judgment, he offered to submit the

case to the Supreme Court, and to abide by its decision. By making

this proposition he risked nothing; yet it was a proposition which his

opponents could hardly reject. Nobody could be treated as a criminal

for obeying what the judges should solemnly pronounce to be the lawful

government. The boldest man would shrink from taking arms in defence

of what the judges should pronounce to be usurpation. Clavering and

Francis, after some delay, unwillingly consented to abide by the award

of the court. The court pronounced that the resignation was invalid, and

that therefore Hastings was still Governor-General under the Regulating

Act; and the defeated members of the Council, finding that the sense of

the whole settlement was against them, acquiesced in the decision.

About this time arrived the news that, after a suit which had lasted

several years, the Franconian courts had decreed a divorce between

Imhoff and his wife. The Baron left Calcutta, carrying with him the

means of buying an estate in Saxony. The lady became Mrs. Hastings. The

event was celebrated by great festivities; and all the most conspicuous

persons at Calcutta, without distinction of parties, were invited to

the Government-house. Clavering, as the Mahommedan chronicler tells the

story, was sick in mind and body, and excused himself from joining the

splendid assembly. But Hastings, whom, as it should seem, success

in ambition and in love had put into high good-humour, would take no

denial. He went himself to the General’s house, and at length brought

his vanquished rival in triumph to the gay circle which surrounded the

bride. The exertion was too much for a frame broken by mortification as

well as by disease. Clavering died a few days later.

Wheler, who came out expecting to be Governor-General, and was forced to

content himself with a seat at the council-board, generally voted

with Francis. But the Governor-General, with Barwell’s help and his own

casting vote, was still the master. Some change took place at this time

in the feeling both of the Court of Directors and of the Ministers of

the Crown. All designs against Hastings were dropped; and, when his

original term of five years expired, he was quietly reappointed. The

truth is, that the fearful dangers to which the public interests in

every quarter were now exposed, made both Lord North and the Company

unwilling to part with a Governor whose talents, experience, and

resolution, enmity itself was compelled to acknowledge.

The crisis was indeed formidable. That great and victorious empire, on

the throne of which George the Third had taken his seat eighteen years

before, with brighter hopes than had attended the accession of any

of the long line of English sovereigns, had, by the most senseless

misgovernment, been brought to the verge of ruin. In America millions

of Englishmen were at war with the country from which their blood, their

language, their religion, and their institutions were derived, and to

which, but a short time before, they had been as strongly attached

as the inhabitants of Norfolk and Leicestershire. The great powers of

Europe, humbled to the dust by the vigour and genius which had guided

the councils of George the Second, now rejoiced in the prospect of

a signal revenge. The time was approaching when our island, while

struggling to keep down the United States of America, and pressed with

a still nearer danger by the too just discontents of Ireland, was to

be assailed by France, Spain, and Holland, and to be threatened by the

armed neutrality of the Baltic; when even our maritime supremacy was to

be in jeopardy; when hostile fleets were to command the Straits of Calpe

and the Mexican Sea; when the British flag was to be scarcely able to

protect the British Channel. Great as were the faults of Hastings, it

was happy for our country that at that conjuncture, the most terrible

through which she has ever passed, he was the ruler of her Indian

dominions.

An attack by sea on Bengal was little to be apprehended. The danger was

that the European enemies of England might form an alliance with

some native power, might furnish that power with troops, arms, and

ammunition, and might thus assail our possessions on the side of the

land. It was chiefly from the Mahrattas that Hastings anticipated

danger. The original seat of that singular people was the wild range

of hills which runs along the western coast of India. In the reign of

Aurungzebe the inhabitants of those regions, led by the great Sevajee,

began to descend on the possessions of their wealthier and less warlike

neighbours. The energy, ferocity, and cunning of the Mahrattas, soon

made them the most conspicuous among the new powers which were generated

by the corruption of the decaying monarchy. At first they were only

robbers. They soon rose to the dignity of conquerors. Half the provinces

of the empire were turned into Mahratta principalities, Freebooters,

sprung from low castes, and accustomed to menial employments, became

mighty Rajahs. The Bonslas, at the head of a band of plunderers,

occupied the vast region of Berar. The Guicowar, which is, being

interpreted, the Herdsman, founded that dynasty which still reigns in

Guzerat. The houses of Scindia and Holkar waxed great in Malwa. One

adventurous captain made his nest on the impregnable rock of Gooti.

Another became the lord of the thousand villages which are scattered

among the green rice-fields of Tanjore.

That was the time throughout India of double government. The form and

the power were everywhere separated. The Mussulman nabobs who had become

sovereign princes, the Vizier in Oude, and the Nizam at Hyderabad, still

called themselves the viceroys of the House of Tamerlane. In the same

manner the Mahratta states, though really independent of each other,

pretended to be members of one empire. They all acknowledged, by words

and ceremonies, the supremacy of the heir of Sevajee, a roi faineant who

chewed bang and toyed with dancing girls in a state prison at Sattara,

and of his Peshwa or mayor of the palace, a great hereditary magistrate,

who kept a court with kingly state at Poonah, and whose authority was

obeyed in the spacious provinces of Aurungabad and Bejapoor.

Some months before war was declared in Europe the Government of Bengal

was alarmed by the news that a French adventurer, who passed for a man

of quality, had arrived at Poonah. It was said that he had been received

there with great distinction, that he had delivered to the Peshwa

letters and presents from Louis the Sixteenth, and that a treaty,

hostile to England, had been concluded between France and the Mahrattas.

Hastings immediately resolved to strike the first blow. The title of

the Peshwa was not undisputed. A portion of the Mahratta nation was

favourable to a pretender. The Governor General determined to espouse

this pretender’s interest, to move an army across the peninsula of

India, and to form a close alliance with the chief of the house of

Bonsla, who ruled Berar, and who, in power and dignity, was inferior to

none of the Mahratta princes.

The army had marched, and the negotiations with Berar were in progress,

when a letter from the English consul at Cairo brought the news that war

had been proclaimed both in London and Paris. All the measures which the

crisis required were adopted by Hastings without a moment’s delay. The

French factories in Bengal were seized. Orders were sent to Madras

that Pondicherry should instantly be occupied. Near Calcutta works were

thrown up which were thought to render the approach of a hostile force

impossible. A maritime establishment was formed for the defence of the

river. Nine new battalions of sepoys were raised, and a corps of native

artillery was formed out of the hardy Lascars of the Bay of Bengal.

Having made these arrangements, the Governor-General, with calm

confidence, pronounced his presidency secure from all attack, unless the

Mahrattas should march against it in conjunction with the French.

The expedition which Hastings had sent westward was not so speedily

or completely successful as most of his undertakings. The commanding

officer procrastinated. The authorities at Bombay blundered. But the

Governor-General persevered. A new commander repaired the errors of his

predecessor. Several brilliant actions spread the military renown of the

English through regions where no European flag had ever been seen. It

is probable that, if a new and more formidable danger had not compelled

Hastings to change his whole policy, his plans respecting the Mahratta

empire would have been carried into complete effect.

The authorities in England had wisely sent out to Bengal, as commander

of the forces and member of the Council, one of the most distinguished

soldiers of that time. Sir Eyre Coote had, many years before, been

conspicuous among the founders of the British empire in the East. At

the council of war which preceded the battle of Plassey, he earnestly

recommended, in opposition to the majority, that daring course which,

after some hesitation, was adopted, and which was crowned with such

splendid success. He subsequently commanded in the south of India

against the brave and unfortunate Lally, gained the decisive battle of

Wandewash over the French and their native allies, took Pondicherry,

and made the English power supreme in the Carnatic. Since those great

exploits near twenty years had elapsed. Coote had no longer the bodily

activity which he had shown in earlier days; nor was the vigour of his

mind altogether unimpaired. He was capricious and fretful, and required

much coaxing to keep him in good humour. It must, we fear, be added that

the love of money had grown upon him, and that he thought more about

his allowances, and less about his duties, than might have been expected

from so eminent a member of so noble a profession. Still he was perhaps

the ablest officer that was then to be found in the British army. Among

the native soldiers his name was great and his influence unrivalled. Nor

is he yet forgotten by them. Now and then a white-bearded old sepoy may

still be found who loves to talk of Porto Novo and Pollilore. It is but

a short time since one of those aged men came to present a memorial to

an English officer, who holds one of the highest employments in India.

A print of Coote hung in the room. The veteran recognised at once that

face and figure which he had not seen for more than half a century, and,

forgetting his salaam to the living, halted, drew himself up lifted his

hand, and with solemn reverence paid his military obeisance to the dead.

Coote, though he did not, like Barwell, vote constantly with the

Governor-General, was by no means inclined to join in systematic

opposition, and on most questions concurred with Hastings, who did

his best, by assiduous courtship, and by readily granting the most

exorbitant allowances, to gratify the strongest passions of the old

soldier.

It seemed likely at this time that a general reconciliation would put an

end to the quarrels which had, during some years, weakened and disgraced

the Government of Bengal. The dangers of the empire might well induce

men of patriotic feeling--and of patriotic feeling neither Hastings nor

Francis was destitute--to forget private enmities, and to co-operate

heartily for the general good. Coote had never been concerned in

faction. Wheler was thoroughly tired of it. Barwell had made an ample

fortune, and, though he had promised that he would not leave Calcutta

while his help was needed in Council, was most desirous to return to

England, and exerted himself to promote an arrangement which would set

him at liberty.

A compact was made, by which Francis agreed to desist from opposition,

and Hastings engaged that the friends of Francis should be admitted to

a fair share of the honours and emoluments of the service. During a

few months after this treaty there was apparent harmony at the

council-board.

Harmony, indeed, was never more necessary: for at this moment internal

calamities, more formidable than war itself menaced Bengal. The authors

of the Regulating Act of 1773 had established two independent powers,

the one judicial, and the other political; and, with a carelessness

scandalously common in English legislation, had omitted to define the

limits of either. The judges took advantage of the indistinctness,

and attempted to draw to themselves supreme authority, not only within

Calcutta, but through the whole of the great territory subject to the

Presidency of Fort William. There are few Englishmen who will not admit

that the English law, in spite of modern improvements, is neither so

cheap nor so speedy as might be wished. Still, it is a system which

has grown up among us. In some points it has been fashioned to suit our

feelings; in others, it has gradually fashioned our feelings to suit

itself. Even to its worst evils we are accustomed; and therefore, though

we may complain of them, they do not strike us with the horror and

dismay which would be produced by a new grievance of smaller severity.

In India the case is widely different. English law, transplanted to that

country, has all the vices from which we suffer here; it has them all

in a far higher degree; and it has other vices, compared with which the

worst vices from which we suffer are trifles. Dilatory here, it is far

more dilatory in a land where the help of an interpreter is needed by

every judge and by every advocate. Costly here, it is far more costly

in a land into which the legal practitioners must be imported from an

immense distance. All English labour in India, from the labour of the

Governor-General and the Commander-in-Chief, down to that of a groom

or a watchmaker, must be paid for at a higher rate than at home. No man

will be banished, and banished to the torrid zone, for nothing. The rule

holds good with respect to the legal profession. No English barrister

will work, fifteen thousand miles from all his friends, with the

thermometer at ninety-six in the shade, for the emoluments which will

content him in chambers that overlook the Thames. Accordingly, the fees

at Calcutta are about three times as great as the fees of Westminster

Hall; and this, though the people of India are, beyond all comparison,

poorer than the people of England. Yet the delay and the expense,

grievous as they are, form the smallest part of the evil which English

law, imported without modifications into India, could not fail to

produce. The strongest feelings of our nature, honour, religion, female

modesty, rose up against the innovation. Arrest on mesne process was the

first step in most civil proceedings; and to a native of rank arrest

was not merely a restraint, but a foul personal indignity. Oaths were

required in every stage of every suit; and the feeling of a quaker about

an oath is hardly stronger than that of a respectable native. That the

apartments of a woman of quality should be entered by strange men, or

that her face should be seen by them, are, in the East, intolerable

outrages, outrages which are more dreaded than death, and which can

be expiated only by the shedding of blood. To these outrages the most

distinguished families of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa were now exposed.

Imagine what the state of our own country would be, if a jurisprudence

were on a sudden introduced among us, which should be to us what our

jurisprudence was to our Asiatic subjects. Imagine what the state of our

country would be, if it were enacted that any man, by merely swearing

that a debt was due to him, should acquire a right to insult the persons

of men of the most honourable and sacred callings and of women of the

most shrinking delicacy, to horsewhip a general officer, to put a bishop

in the stocks, to treat ladies in the way which called forth the blow of

Wat Tyler. Something like this was the effect of the attempt which the

Supreme Court made to extend its jurisdiction over the whole of the

Company’s territory.

A reign of terror began, of terror heightened by mystery for even that

which was endured was less horrible than that which was anticipated.

No man knew what was next to be expected from this strange tribunal.

It came from beyond the black water, as the people of India, with

mysterious horror, call the sea. It consisted of judges not one of whom

was familiar with the usages of the millions over whom they claimed

boundless authority. Its records were kept in unknown characters; its

sentences were pronounced in unknown sounds. It had already collected

round itself an army of the worst part the native population, informers,

and false witnesses, and common barrators, and agents of chicane, and

above all, a banditti of bailiffs followers, compared with whom the

retainers of the worst English sponging-houses, in the worst times,

might be considered as upright and tender-hearted. Many natives, highly

considered among their countrymen, were seized, hurried up to Calcutta,

flung into the common gaol, not for any crime even imputed, not for any

debt that had been proved, but merely as a precaution till their cause

should come to trial There were instances in which men of the most

venerable dignity, persecuted without a cause by extortioners, died of

rage and shame in the gripe of the vile alguazils of Impey. The harems

of noble Mahommedans, sanctuaries respected in the East by governments

which respected nothing else, were burst open by gangs of bailiffs. The

Mussulmans, braver and less accustomed to submission than the Hindoos,

sometimes stood on their defence; and there were instances in which they

shed their blood in the doorway, while defending, sword in hand,

the sacred apartments of their women. Nay, it seemed as if even the

faint-hearted Bengalee, who had crouched at the feet of Surajah Dowlah,

who had been mute during the administration of Vansittart, would at

length find courage in despair. No Mahratta invasion had ever spread

through the province such dismay as this inroad of English lawyers. All

the injustice of former oppressors, Asiatic and European, appeared as a

blessing when compared with the justice of the Supreme Court.

Every class of the population, English and native, with the exception

of the ravenous pettifoggers who fattened on the misery and terror of an

immense community, cried out loudly against this fearful oppression. But

the judges were immovable. If a bailiff was resisted, they ordered the

soldiers to be called out. If a servant of the Company, in conformity

with the orders of the Government, withstood the miserable catchpoles

who, with Impey’s writs in their hands, exceeded the insolence and

rapacity of gang-robbers, he was flung into prison for a contempt. The

lapse of sixty years, the virtue and wisdom of many eminent magistrates

who have during that time administered justice in the Supreme Court,

have not effaced from the minds of the people of Bengal the recollection

of those evil days.

The members of the Government were, on this subject, united as one man.

Hastings had courted the judges; he had found them useful instruments;

but he was not disposed to make them his own masters, or the masters of

India. His mind was large; his knowledge of the native character most

accurate. He saw that the system pursued by the Supreme Court was

degrading to the Government and ruinous to the people; and he resolved

to oppose it manfully. The consequence was, that the friendship, if that

be the proper word for such a connection, which had existed between him

and Impey, was for a time completely dissolved. The Government placed

itself firmly between the tyrannical tribunal and the people. The Chief

Justice proceeded to the wildest excesses. The Governor-General and all

the members of Council were served with writs, calling on them to appear

before the King’s justices, and to answer for their public acts. This

was too much. Hastings, with just scorn, refused to obey the call,

set at liberty the persons wrongfully detained by the court, and took

measures for resisting the outrageous proceedings of the sheriff’s

officers, if necessary, by the sword. But he had in view another device,

which might prevent the necessity of an appeal to arms. He was seldom at

a loss for an expedient; and he knew Impey well. The expedient, in this

case, was a very simple one, neither more nor less than a bribe. Impey

was, by Act of Parliament, a judge, independent of the Government of

Bengal, and entitled to a salary of eight thousand a year. Hastings

proposed to make him also a judge in the Company’s service, removable

at the pleasure of the Government of Bengal; and to give him, in that

capacity, about eight thousand a year more. It was understood that, in

consideration of this new salary, Impey would desist from urging the

high pretensions of his court. If he did urge these pretensions, the

Government could, at a moment’s notice, eject him from the new place

which had been created for him. The bargain was struck; Bengal was

saved; an appeal to force was averted; and the Chief Justice was rich,

quiet and infamous.

Of Impey’s conduct it is unnecessary to speak. It was of a piece with

almost every part of his conduct that comes under the notice of history.

No other such judge has dishonoured the English ermine, since Jeffreys

drank himself to death in the Tower. But we cannot agree with those

who have blamed Hastings for this transaction. The case stood thus. The

negligent manner in which the Regulating Act had been framed put it in

the power of the Chief Justice to throw a great country into the most

dreadful confusion. He was determined to use his power to the utmost,

unless he was paid to be still; and Hastings consented to pay him. The

necessity was to be deplored. It is also to be deplored that pirates

should be able to exact ransom, by threatening to make their captives

walk the plank. But to ransom a captive from pirates has always been

held a humane and Christian act; and it would be absurd to charge the

payer of the ransom with corrupting the virtue of the corsair. This, we

seriously think, is a not unfair illustration of the relative position

of Impey, Hastings, and the people of India. Whether it was right in

Impey to demand or to accept a price for powers which, if they really

belonged to him, he could not abdicate, which, if they did not belong to

him, he ought never to have usurped, and which in neither case he could

honestly sell, is one question. It is quite another question whether

Hastings was not right to give any sum, however large, to any man,

however worthless, rather than either surrender millions of human being

to pillage, or rescue them by civil war.

Francis strongly opposed this arrangement. It may, indeed be suspected

that personal aversion to Impey was as strong motive with Francis

as regard for the welfare of the province. To a mind burning with

resentment, it might seem better to leave Bengal to the oppressors than

to redeem it by enriching them. It is not improbable, on the other hand,

that Hastings may have been the more willing to resort to an expedient

agreeable to the Chief Justice, because that high functionary had

already been so serviceable, and might, when existing dissensions were

composed, be serviceable again.

But it was not on this point alone that Francis was now opposed to

Hastings. The peace between them proved to be only a short and hollow

truce, during which their mutual aversion was constantly becoming

stronger. At length an explosion took place. Hastings publicly charged

Francis with having deceived him, and with having induced Barwell to

quit the service by insincere promises. Then came a dispute, such

as frequently arises even between honourable men, when they may

make important agreements by mere verbal communication. An impartial

historian will probably be of opinion that they had misunderstood each

other: but their minds were so much embittered that they imputed to each

other nothing less than deliberate villainy. “I do not,” said Hastings,

in a minute recorded on the Consultations of the Government, “I do

not trust to Mr. Francis’s promises of candour, convinced that he is

incapable of it. I judge of his public conduct by his private, which I

have found to be void of truth and honour.” After the Council had

risen, Francis put a challenge into the Governor-General’s hand. It was

instantly accepted. They met, and fired. Francis was shot through the

body. He was carried to a neighbouring house, where it appeared that the

wound, though severe, was not mortal. Hastings inquired repeatedly after

his enemy’s health, and proposed to call on him; but Francis

coldly declined the visit. He had a proper sense, he said, of the

Governor-General’s politeness, but could not consent to any private

interview. They could meet only at the council-board.

In a very short time it was made signally manifest to how great a danger

the Governor-General had, on this occasion, exposed his country. A

crisis arrived with which he, and he alone, was competent to deal. It is

not too much to say that if he had been taken from the head of affairs,

the years 1780 and 1781 would have been as fatal to our power in Asia as

to our power in America.

The Mahrattas had been the chief objects of apprehension to Hastings.

The measures which he had adopted for the purpose of breaking their

power, had at first been frustrated by the errors of those whom he was

compelled to employ; but his perseverance and ability seemed likely to

be crowned with success, when a far more formidable danger showed itself

in a distant quarter.

About thirty years before this time, a Mahommedan soldier had begun to

distinguish himself in the wars of Southern India. His education had

been neglected; his extraction was humble. His father had been a petty

officer of revenue; his grandfather a wandering dervise. But though thus

meanly descended, though ignorant even of the alphabet, the adventurer

had no sooner been placed at the head of a body of troops than he proved

himself a man born for conquest and command. Among the crowd of chiefs

who were struggling for a share of India, none could compare with him in

the qualities of the captain and the statesman. He became a general; he

became a sovereign. Out of the fragments of old principalities, which

had gone to pieces in the general wreck he formed for himself a great,

compact, and vigorous empire. That empire he ruled with the ability,

severity, and vigilance of Lewis the Eleventh. Licentious in his

pleasures, implacable in his revenge, he had yet enlargement of mind

enough to perceive how much the prosperity of subjects adds to the

strength of governments. He was an oppressor; but he had at least the

merit of protecting his people against all oppression except his own.

He was now in extreme old age; but his intellect was as clear, and his

spirit as high, as in the prime of manhood. Such was the great Hyder

Ali, the founder of the Mahommedan kingdom of Mysore, and the most

formidable enemy with whom the English conquerors of India have ever had

to contend.

Had Hastings been governor of Madras, Hyder would have been either made

a friend, or vigorously encountered as an enemy. Unhappily the English

authorities in the south provoked their powerful neighbour’s hostility,

without being prepared to repel it. On a sudden, an army of ninety

thousand men, far superior in discipline and efficiency to any other

native force that could be found in India, came pouring through those

wild passes which, worn by mountain torrents, and dark with jungle, lead

down from the table-land of Mysore to the plains of the Carnatic.

This great army was accompanied by a hundred pieces of cannon; and

its movements were guided by many French officers, trained in the best

military schools of Europe.

Hyder was everywhere triumphant. The sepoys in many British garrisons

flung down their arms. Some forts were surrendered by treachery, and

some by despair. In a few days the whole open country north of the

Coleroon had submitted. The English inhabitants of Madras could already

see by night, from the top of Mount St. Thomas, the eastern sky reddened

by a vast semicircle of blazing villages. The white villas, to which our

countrymen retire after the daily labours of government and of trade,

when the cool evening breeze springs up from the bay, were now left

without inhabitants; for bands of the fierce horsemen of Mysore had

already been seen prowling among the tulip-trees, and near the gay

verandas. Even the town was not thought secure, and the British

merchants and public functionaries made haste to crowd themselves behind

the cannon of Fort St. George.

There were the means, indeed, of assembling an army which might have

defended the presidency, and even driven the invader back to his

mountains. Sir Hector Munro was at the head of one considerable force;

Baillie was advancing with another. United, they might have presented

a formidable front even to such an enemy as Hyder. But the English

commanders, neglecting those fundamental rules of the military art of

which the propriety is obvious even to men who had never received

a military education, deferred their junction, and were separately

attacked. Baillie’s detachment was destroyed. Munro was forced to

abandon his baggage, to fling his guns into the tanks, and to save

himself by a retreat which might be called a flight. In three weeks from

the commencement of the war, the British empire in Southern India had

been brought to the verge of ruin. Only a few fortified places remained

to us. The glory of our arms had departed. It was known that a great

French expedition might soon be expected on the coast of Coromandel.

England, beset by enemies on every side, was in no condition to protect

such remote dependencies.

Then it was that the fertile genius and serene courage of Hastings

achieved their most signal triumph. A swift ship, flying before the

southwest monsoon, brought the evil tidings in few days to Calcutta.

In twenty-four hours the Governor-General had framed a complete plan of

policy adapted to the altered state of affairs. The struggle with Hyder

was a struggle for life and death. All minor objects must be sacrificed

to the preservation of the Carnatic. The disputes with the Mahrattas

must be accommodated. A large military force and a supply of money

must be instantly sent to Madras. But even these measures would be

insufficient, unless the war, hitherto so grossly mismanaged, were

placed under the direction of a vigorous mind. It was no time for

trifling. Hastings determined to resort to an extreme exercise of power,

to suspend the incapable governor of Fort St. George, to send Sir Eyre

Coote to oppose Hyder, and to intrust that distinguished general with

the whole administration of the war.

In spite of the sullen opposition of Francis, who had now recovered from

his wound, and had returned to the Council, the Governor-General’s

wise and firm policy was approved by the majority of the Board. The

reinforcements were sent off with great expedition, and reached Madras

before the French armament arrived in the Indian seas. Coote, broken by

age and disease, was no longer the Coote of Wandewash; but he was still

a resolute and skilful commander. The progress of Hyder was arrested;

and in a few months the great victory of Porto Novo retrieved the honour

of the English arms.

In the meantime Francis had returned to England, and Hastings was now

left perfectly unfettered. Wheler had gradually been relaxing in his

opposition, and, after the departure of his vehement and implacable

colleague, cooperated heartily with the Governor-General, whose

influence over the British in India, always great, had, by the vigour

and success of his recent measures, been considerably increased.

But, though the difficulties arising from factions within the Council

were at an end, another class of difficulties had become more pressing

than ever. The financial embarrassment was extreme. Hastings had to

find the means, not only of carrying on the government of Bengal, but of

maintaining a most costly war against both Indian and European enemies

in the Carnatic, and of making remittances to England. A few years

before this time he had obtained relief by plundering the Mogul and

enslaving the Rohillas; nor were the resources of his fruitful mind by

any means exhausted.

His first design was on Benares, a city which in wealth, population,

dignity, and sanctity, was among the foremost of Asia. It was commonly

believed that half a million of human beings was crowded into that

labyrinth of lofty alleys, rich with shrines, and minarets, and

balconies, and carved oriels, to which the sacred apes clung by

hundreds. The traveller could scarcely make his way through the press of

holy mendicants and not less holy bulls. The broad and stately

flights of steps which descended from these swarming haunts to the

bathing-places along the Ganges were worn every day by the footsteps of

an innumerable multitude of worshippers. The schools and temples drew

crowds of pious Hindoos from every province where the Brahminical faith

was known. Hundreds of devotees came thither every month to die: for

it was believed that a peculiarly happy fate awaited the man who should

pass from the sacred city into the sacred river. Nor was superstition

the only motive which allured strangers to that great metropolis.

Commerce had as many pilgrims as religion. All along the shores of

the venerable stream lay great fleets of vessels laden with rich

merchandise. From the looms of Benares went forth the most delicate

silks that adorned the balls of St. James’s and of the Petit Trianon;

and in the bazars, the muslins of Bengal and the sabres of Oude were

mingled with the jewels of Golconda and the shawls of Cashmere. This

rich capital, and the surrounding tract, had long been under the

immediate rule of a Hindoo prince, who rendered homage to the Mogul

emperors. During the great anarchy of India, the lords of Benares became

independent of the Court of Delhi, but were compelled to submit to the

authority of the Nabob of Oude. Oppressed by this formidable neighbour,

they invoked the protection of the English. The English protection was

given; and at length the Nabob Vizier, by a solemn treaty, ceded all

his rights over Benares to the Company. From that time the Rajah was

the vassal of the Government of Bengal, acknowledged its supremacy, and

engaged to send an annual tribute to Fort William. This tribute Cheyte

Sing, the reigning prince, had paid with strict punctuality.

About the precise nature of the legal relation between the Company and

the Rajah of Benares, there has been much warm and acute controversy. On

the one side, it has been maintained that Cheyte Sing was merely a great

subject on whom the superior power had a right to call for aid in the

necessities of the empire. On the other side, it has been contended that

he was an independent prince, that the only claim which the Company had

upon him was for a fixed tribute, and that, while the fixed tribute was

regularly paid, as it assuredly was, the English had no more right to

exact any further contribution from him than to demand subsidies from

Holland or Denmark. Nothing is easier than to find precedents and

analogies in favour of either view.

Our own impression is that neither view is correct. It was too much the

habit of English politicians to take it for granted that there was in

India a known and definite constitution by which questions of this kind

were to be decided. The truth is that, during the interval which elapsed

between the fall of the house of Tamerlane and the establishment of the

British ascendency, there was no such constitution. The old order of

things had passed away; the new order of things was not yet formed. All

was transition, confusion, obscurity. Everybody kept his head as he best

might, and scrambled for whatever he could get. There have been similar

seasons in Europe. The time of the dissolution of the Carlovingian

empire is an instance. Who would think of seriously discussing the

question, what extent of pecuniary aid and of obedience Hugh Capet had

constitutional right to demand from the Duke of Brittany or the Duke

of Normandy? The words “constitutional right” had, in that state of

society, no meaning. If Hugh Capet laid hands on all the possessions of

the Duke of Normandy, this might be unjust and immoral; but it would not

be illegal, in the sense in which the ordinances of Charles the Tenth

were illegal. If, on the other hand, the Duke of Normandy made war

on Hugh Capet, this might be unjust and immoral; but it would not be

illegal, in the sense in which the expedition of Prince Louis Bonaparte

was illegal.

Very similar to this was the state of India sixty years ago. Of the

existing governments not a single one could lay claim to legitimacy, or

could plead any other title than recent occupation. There was scarcely a

province in which the real sovereignty and the nominal sovereignty were

not disjoined. Titles and forms were still retained which implied that

the heir of Tamerlane was an absolute ruler, and that the Nabobs of the

provinces were his lieutenants. In reality, he was a captive. The Nabobs

were in some places independent princes. In other places, as in Bengal

and the Carnatic, they had, like their master, become mere phantoms, and

the Company was supreme. Among the Mahrattas, again, the heir of Sevajee

still kept the title of Rajah; but he was a prisoner, and his prime

minister, the Peshwa, had become the hereditary chief of the state. The

Peshwa, in his turn, was fast sinking into the same degraded situation

into which he had reduced the Rajah. It was, we believe, impossible to

find, from the Himalayas to Mysore, a single government which was once

a government de facto and a government de jure, which possessed the

physical means of making itself feared by its neighbours and subjects,

and which had at the same time the authority derived from law and long

prescription.

Hastings clearly discerned, what was hidden from most of his

contemporaries, that such a state of things gave immense advantages to a

ruler of great talents and few scruples. In every international question

that could arise, he had his option between the de facto ground and the

de jure ground; and the probability was that one of those grounds would

sustain any claim that it might be convenient for him to make, and

enable him to resist any claim made by others. In every controversy,

accordingly, he resorted to the plea which suited his immediate purpose,

without troubling himself in the least about consistency; and thus he

scarcely ever failed to find what, to persons of short memories and

scanty information, seemed to be a justification for what he wanted

to do. Sometimes the Nabob of Bengal is a shadow, sometimes a monarch.

Sometimes the Vizier is a mere deputy, sometimes an independent

potentate. If it is expedient for the Company to show some legal title

to the revenues of Bengal, the grant under the seal of the Mogul is

brought forward as an instrument of the highest authority. When the

Mogul asks for the rents which were reserved to him by that very grant,

he is told that he is a mere pageant, that the English power rests on

a very different foundation from a charter given by him, that he is

welcome to play at royalty as long as he likes, but that he must expect

no tribute from the real masters of India.

It is true that it was in the power of others, as well as of Hastings,

to practise this legerdemain; but in the controversies of governments,

sophistry is of little use unless it be backed by power. There is a

principle which Hastings was fond of asserting in the strongest terms,

and on which he acted with undeviating steadiness. It is a principle

which, we must own, though it may be grossly abused, can hardly be

disputed in the present state of public law. It is this, that where an

ambiguous question arises between two governments, there is, if they

cannot agree, no appeal except to force, and that the opinion of the

stronger must prevail. Almost every question was ambiguous in India.

The English Government was the strongest in India. The consequences are

obvious. The English Government might do exactly what it chose.

The English Government now chose to wring money out of Cheyte Sing. It

had formerly been convenient to treat him as a sovereign prince; it was

now convenient to treat him as a subject. Dexterity inferior to that of

Hastings could easily find, in the general chaos of laws and customs,

arguments for either course. Hastings wanted a great supply. It was

known that Cheyte Sing had a large revenue, and it was suspected that he

had accumulated a treasure. Nor was he a favourite at Calcutta. He had,

when the Governor-General was in great difficulties, courted the favour

of Francis and Clavering. Hastings, who, less perhaps from evil passions

than from policy, seldom left an injury unpunished, was not sorry that

the fate of Cheyte Sing should teach neighbouring princes the same

lesson which the fate of Nuncomar had already impressed on the

inhabitants of Bengal.

In 1778, on the first breaking out of the war with France, Cheyte

Sing was called upon to pay, in addition to his fixed tribute, an

extraordinary contribution of fifty thousand pounds. In 1779, an equal

sum was exacted. In 1780, the demand was renewed. Cheyte Sing, in the

hope of obtaining some indulgence, secretly offered the Governor-General

a bribe of twenty thousand pounds. Hastings took the money, and his

enemies have maintained that he took it intending to keep it. He

certainly concealed the transaction, for a time, both from the Council

in Bengal and from the Directors at home; nor did he ever give any

satisfactory reason for the concealment. Public spirit, or the fear of

detection, at last determined him to withstand the temptation. He paid

over the bribe to the Company’s treasury, and insisted that the Rajah

should instantly comply with the demands of the English Government. The

Rajah, after the fashion of his countrymen, shuffled, solicited, and

pleaded poverty. The grasp of Hastings was not to be so eluded. He added

to the requisition another ten thousand pounds as a fine for delay, and

sent troops to exact the money.

The money was paid. But this was not enough. The late events in the

south of India had increased the financial embarrassments of the

Company. Hastings was determined to plunder Cheyte Sing, and, for that

end, to fasten a quarrel on him. Accordingly, the Rajah was now required

to keep a body of cavalry for the service of the British Government. He

objected and evaded. This was exactly what the Governor-General wanted.

He had now a pretext for treating the wealthiest of his vassals as a

criminal. “I resolved,”--these were the words of Hastings himself,--“to

draw from his guilt the means of relief of the Company’s distresses, to

make him pay largely for his pardon, or to exact a severe vengeance for

past delinquency.” The plan was simply this, to demand larger and larger

contributions till the Rajah should be driven to remonstrate, then to

call his remonstrance a crime, and to punish him by confiscating all his

possessions.

Cheyte Sing was in the greatest dismay. He offered two hundred thousand

pounds to propitiate the British Government. But Hastings replied that

nothing less than half a million would be accepted. Nay, he began to

think of selling Benares to Oude, as he had formerly sold Allahabad

and Rohilcund. The matter was one which could not be well managed at a

distance; and Hastings resolved to visit Benares.

Cheyte Sing received his liege lord with every mark of reverence, came

near sixty miles, with his guards, to meet and escort the illustrious

visitor, and expressed his deep concern at the displeasure of the

English. He even took off his turban, and laid it in the lap of

Hastings, a gesture which in India marks the most profound submission

and devotion. Hastings behaved with cold and repulsive severity. Having

arrived at Benares, he sent to the Rajah a paper containing the demands

of the Government of Bengal. The Rajah, in reply, attempted to clear

himself from the accusations brought against him. Hastings, who wanted

money and not excuses, was not to be put off by the ordinary artifices

of Eastern negotiation. He instantly ordered the Rajah to be arrested

and placed under the custody of two companies of sepoys.

In taking these strong measures, Hastings scarcely showed his usual

judgment. It is possible that, having had little opportunity of

personally observing any part of the population of India, except the

Bengalees, he was not fully aware of the difference between their

character and that of the tribes which inhabit the upper provinces. He

was now in a land far more favourable to the vigour of the human frame

than the Delta of the Ganges; in a land fruitful of soldiers, who have

been found worthy to follow English battalions to the charge and into

the breach. The Rajah was popular among his subjects. His administration

had been mild; and the prosperity of the district which he governed

presented a striking contrast to the depressed state of Bahar under our

rule, and a still more striking contrast to the misery of the provinces

which were cursed by the tyranny of the Nabob Vizier. The national and

religious prejudices with which the English were regarded throughout

India were peculiarly intense in the metropolis of the Brahminical

superstition. It can therefore scarcely be doubted that the

Governor-General, before he outraged the dignity of Cheyte Sing by an

arrest, ought to have assembled a force capable of bearing down all

opposition. This had not been done. The handful of sepoys who attended

Hastings would probably have been sufficient to overawe Moorshedabad, or

the Black Town of Calcutta. But they were unequal to a conflict with the

hardy rabble of Benares. The streets surrounding the palace were filled

by an immense multitude, of whom a large proportion, as is usual in

Upper India, wore arms. The tumult became a fight, and the fight a

massacre. The English officers defended themselves with desperate

courage against overwhelming numbers, and fell, as became them, sword

in hand. The sepoys were butchered. The gates were forced. The captive

prince, neglected by his gaolers, during the confusion, discovered an

outlet which opened on the precipitous bank of the Ganges, let himself

down to the water by a string made of the turbans of his attendants,

found a boat, and escaped to the opposite shore.

If Hastings had, by indiscreet violence, brought himself into a

difficult and perilous situation, it is only just to acknowledge that he

extricated himself with even more than his usual ability and presence of

mind. He had only fifty men with him. The building in which he had taken

up his residence was on every side blockaded by the insurgents, But his

fortitude remained unshaken. The Rajah from the other side of the river

sent apologies and liberal offers. They were not even answered. Some

subtle and enterprising men were found who undertook to pass through the

throng of enemies, and to convey the intelligence of the late events to

the English cantonments. It is the fashion of the natives of India to

wear large earrings of gold. When they travel, the rings are laid aside,

lest the precious metal should tempt some gang of robbers; and, in place

of the ring, a quill or a roll of paper is inserted in the orifice to

prevent it from closing. Hastings placed in the cars of his messengers

letters rolled up in the smallest compass. Some of these letters were

addressed to the commanders of English troops. One was written to

assure his wife of his safety. One was to the envoy whom he had sent

to negotiate with the Mahrattas. Instructions for the negotiation

were needed; and the Governor-General framed them in that situation of

extreme danger, with as much composure as if he had been writing in his

palace at Calcutta.

Things, however, were not yet at the worst. An English officer of more

spirit than judgment, eager to distinguish himself, made a premature

attack on the insurgents beyond the river. His troops were entangled in

narrow streets, and assailed by a furious population. He fell, with many

of his men; and the survivors were forced to retire.

This event produced the effect which has never failed to follow every

check, however slight, sustained in India by the English arms. For

hundreds of miles round, the whole country was in commotion. The

entire population of the district of Benares took arms. The fields were

abandoned by the husbandmen, who thronged to defend their prince. The

infection spread to Oude. The oppressed people of that province rose

up against the Nabob Vizier, refused to pay their imposts, and put the

revenue officers to flight. Even Bahar was ripe for revolt. The hopes

of Cheyte Sing began to rise. Instead of imploring mercy in the humble

style of a vassal, he began to talk the language of a conqueror, and

threatened, it was said, to sweep the white usurpers out of the land.

But the English troops were now assembling fast. The officers, and

even the private men, regarded the Governor-General with enthusiastic

attachment, and flew to his aid with an alacrity which, as he boasted,

had never been shown on any other occasion. Major Popham, a brave and

skilful soldier, who had highly distinguished himself in the Mahratta

war, and in whom the Governor-General reposed the greatest confidence,

took the command. The tumultuary army of the Rajah was put to rout. His

fastnesses were stormed. In a few hours, above thirty thousand men left

his standard, and returned to their ordinary avocations. The unhappy

prince fled from his country for ever. His fair domain was added to the

British dominions. One of his relations indeed was appointed rajah; but

the Rajah of Benares was henceforth to be, like the Nabob of Bengal, a

mere pensioner.

By this revolution, an addition of two hundred thousand pounds a year

was made to the revenues of the Company. But the immediate relief was

not as great as had been expected. The treasure laid up by Cheyte Sing

had been popularly estimated at a million sterling. It turned out to be

about a fourth part of that sum; and, such as it was, it was seized by

the army, and divided as prize-money.

Disappointed in his expectations from Benares, Hastings was more violent

than he would otherwise have been, in his dealings with Oude. Sujah

Dowlah had long been dead. His son and successor, Asaph-ul-Dowlah, was

one of the weakest and most vicious even of Eastern princes. His

life was divided between torpid repose and the most odious forms of

sensuality. In his court there was boundless waste, throughout his

dominions wretchedness and disorder. He had been, under the skilful

management of the English Government, gradually sinking from the rank of

an independent prince to that of a vassal of the Company. It was only

by the help of a British brigade that he could be secure from the

aggressions of neighbours who despised his weakness, and from the

vengeance of subjects who detested his tyranny. A brigade was furnished,

and he engaged to defray the charge of paying and maintaining it. From

that time his independence was at an end. Hastings was not a man to lose

the advantage which he had thus gained. The Nabob soon began to complain

of the burden which he had undertaken to bear. His revenues, he said,

were falling off; his servants were unpaid; he could no longer support

the expense of the arrangement which he had sanctioned. Hastings would

not listen to these representations. The Vizier, he said, had invited

the Government of Bengal to send him troops, and had promised to pay for

them. The troops had been sent. How long the troops were to remain in

Oude was a matter not settled by the treaty. It remained, therefore, to

be settled between the contracting parties. But the contracting parties

differed. Who then must decide? The stronger.

Hastings also argued that, if the English force was withdrawn, Oude

would certainly become a prey to anarchy, and would probably be overrun

by a Mahratta army. That the finances of Oude were embarrassed he

admitted, But he contended, not without reason, that the embarrassment

was to be attributed to the incapacity and vices of Asaph-ul-Dowlah

himself, and that if less were spent on the troops, the only effect

would be that more would be squandered on worthless favourites.

Hastings, had intended, after settling the affairs of Benares, to visit

Lucknow, and there to confer with Asaph-ul-Dowlah. But the obsequious

courtesy of the Nabob Vizier prevented this visit. With a small train

he hastened to meet the Governor-General. An interview took place in the

fortress which, from the crest of the precipitous rock of Chunar, looks

down on the waters of the Ganges.

At first sight it might appear impossible that the negotiation should

come to an amicable close. Hastings wanted an extraordinary supply of

money. Asaph-ul-Dowlah wanted to obtain a remission of what he already

owed. Such a difference seemed to admit of no compromise. There was,

however, one course satisfactory to both sides, one course by which it

wan possible to relieve the finances both of Oude and of Bengal; and

that course was adopted. It was simply this, that the Governor-General

and the Nabob Vizier should join to rob a third party; and the third

party whom they determined to rob was the parent of one of the robbers.

The mother of the late Nabob and his wife, who was the mother of the

present Nabob, were known as the Begums or Princesses of Oude. They had

possessed great influence over Sujah Dowlah, and had, at his death, been

left in possession of a splendid dotation. The domains of which they

received the rents and administered the government were of wide extent.

The treasure hoarded by the late Nabob, a treasure which was popularly

estimated at near three millions sterling, was in their hands. They

continued to occupy his favourite palace at Fyzabad, the Beautiful

Dwelling; while Asaph-ul-Dowlah held his court in the stately Lucknow,

which he had built for himself on the shores of the Goomti, and had

adorned with noble mosques and colleges.

Asaph-ul-Dowlah had already extorted considerable sums from his

mother. She had at length appealed to the English; and the English had

interfered. A solemn compact had been made, by which she consented to

give her son some pecuniary assistance, and he in his turn promised

never to commit any further invasion of her rights. This compact was

formally guaranteed by the Government of Bengal. But times had changed;

money was wanted; and the power which had given the guarantee was not

ashamed to instigate the spoiler to excesses such that even he shrank

from them.

It was necessary to find some pretext for a confiscation inconsistent,

not merely with plighted faith, not merely with the ordinary rules

of humanity and justice, but also with that great law of filial piety

which, even in the wildest tribes of savages, even in those more

degraded communities which wither under the influence of a corrupt

half-civilisation, retains a certain authority over the human mind. A

pretext was the last thing that Hastings was likely to want. The

insurrection at Benares had produced disturbances in Oude. These

disturbances it was convenient to impute to the Princesses. Evidence for

the imputation there was scarcely any; unless reports wandering from one

mouth to another, and gaining something by every transmission, may be

called evidence. The accused were furnished with no charge; they were

permitted to make no defence for the Governor-General wisely considered

that, if he tried them, he might not be able to find a ground for

plundering them. It was agreed between him and the Nabob Vizier that the

noble ladies should, by a sweeping act of confiscation, be stripped of

their domains and treasures for the benefit of the Company, and that the

sums thus obtained should be accepted by the Government of Bengal in

satisfaction of its claims on the Government of Oude.

While Asaph-ul-Dowlah was at Chunar, he was completely subjugated by the

clear and commanding intellect of the English statesman. But, when

they had separated, the Vizier began to reflect with uneasiness on

the engagements into which he had entered. His mother and grandmother

protested and implored. His heart, deeply corrupted by absolute power

and licentious pleasures, yet not naturally unfeeling, failed him in

this crisis. Even the English resident at Lucknow, though hitherto

devoted to Hastings, shrank from extreme measures. But the

Governor-General was inexorable. He wrote to the resident in terms of

the greatest severity, and declared that, if the spoliation which

had been agreed upon were not instantly carried into effect, he would

himself go to Lucknow, and do that from which feebler minds recoil with

dismay. The resident, thus menaced, waited on his Highness, and insisted

that the treaty of Chunar should be carried into full and immediate

effect. Asaph-ul-Dowlah yielded making at the same time a solemn

protestation that he yielded to compulsion. The lands were resumed;

but the treasure was not so easily obtained. It was necessary to use

violence. A body of the Company’s troops marched to Fyzabad, and forced

the gates of the palace. The Princesses were confined to their own

apartments. But still they refused to submit. Some more stringent mode

of coercion was to be found. A mode was found of which, even at this

distance of time, we cannot speak without shame and sorrow.

There were at Fyzabad two ancient men, belonging to that unhappy class

which a practice, of immemorial antiquity in the East, has excluded from

the pleasures of love and from the hope of posterity. It has always been

held in Asiatic courts that beings thus estranged from sympathy with

their kind are those whom princes may most safely trust. Sujah Dowlah

had been of this opinion. He had given his entire confidence to the two

eunuchs; and after his death they remained at the head of the household

of his widow.

These men were, by the orders of the British Government, seized,

imprisoned, ironed, starved almost to death, in order to extort money

from the Princesses. After they had been two months in confinement,

their health gave way. They implored permission to take a little

exercise in the garden of their prison. The officer who was in charge

of them stated that, if they were allowed this indulgence, there was not

the smallest chance of their escaping, and that their irons really added

nothing to the security of the custody in which they were kept. He

did not understand the plan of his superiors. Their object in these

inflictions was not security but torture; and all mitigation was

refused. Yet this was not the worst. It was resolved by an English

government that these two infirm old men should be delivered to the

tormentors. For that purpose they were removed to Lucknow. What horrors

their dungeon there witnessed can only be guessed. But there remains on

the records of Parliament, this letter, written by a British resident to

a British soldier:

“Sir, the Nabob having determined to inflict corporal punishment upon

the prisoners under your guard, this is to desire that his officers,

when they shall come, may have free access to the prisoners, and be

permitted to do with them as they shall see proper.”

While these barbarities were perpetrated at Lucknow, the Princesses

were still under duress at Fyzabad. Food was allowed to enter their

apartments only in such scanty quantities that their female attendants

were in danger of perishing with hunger. Month after month this cruelty

continued, till at length, after twelve hundred thousand pounds had been

wrung out of the Princesses, Hastings began to think that he had really

got to the bottom of their coffers, and that no rigour could extort

more. Then at length the wretched men who were detained at Lucknow

regained their liberty. When their irons were knocked off, and the doors

of their prison opened, their quivering lips, the tears which ran down

their cheeks, and the thanksgivings which they poured forth to the

common Father of Mussulmans and Christians, melted even the stout hearts

of the English warriors who stood by.

But we must not forget to do justice to Sir Elijah Impey’s conduct on

this occasion. It was not indeed easy for him to intrude himself into a

business so entirely alien from all his official duties. But there

was something inexpressibly alluring, we must suppose, in the peculiar

rankness of the infamy which was then to be got at Lucknow. He hurried

thither as fast as relays of palanquin-bearers could carry him. A crowd

of people came before him with affidavits against the Begums, ready

drawn in their hands. Those affidavits he did not read. Some of them,

indeed, he could not read; for they were in the dialects of Northern

India, and no interpreter was employed. He administered the oath to the

deponents with all possible expedition, and asked not a single question,

not even whether they had perused the statements to which they swore.

This work performed, he got again into his palanquin, and posted back

to Calcutta, to be in time for the opening of term. The cause was one

which, by his own confession, lay altogether out of his jurisdiction.

Under the charter of justice, he had no more right to inquire into

crimes committed by Asiatics in Oude than the Lord President of the

Court of Session of Scotland to hold an assize at Exeter. He had no

right to try the Begums, nor did he pretend to try them. With what

object, then, did he undertake so long a journey? Evidently in order

that he might give, in an irregular manner, that sanction which in

a regular manner he could not give, to the crimes of those who had

recently hired him; and in order that a confused mass of testimony which

he did not sift, which he did not even read, might acquire an authority

not properly belonging to it, from the signature of the highest judicial

functionary in India.

The time was approaching, however, when he was to be stripped of that

robe which has never, since the Revolution, been disgraced so foully

as by him. The state of India had for some time occupied much of the

attention of the British Parliament. Towards the close of the American

war, two committees of the Commons sat on Eastern affairs. In one Edmund

Burke took the lead. The other was under the presidency of the able and

versatile Henry Dundas, then Lord Advocate of Scotland. Great as are

the changes which, during the last sixty years, have taken place in our

Asiatic dominions, the reports which those committees laid on the table

of the House will still be found most interesting and instructive.

There was as yet no connection between the Company and either of the

great parties in the State. The ministers had no motive to defend Indian

abuses. On the contrary, it was for their interest to show, if possible,

that the government and patronage of our Oriental empire might, with

advantage, be transferred to themselves. The votes, therefore, which,

in consequence of the reports made by the two committees, were passed

by the Commons, breathed the spirit of stern and indignant justice. The

severest epithets were applied to several of the measures of Hastings,

especially to the Rohilla war; and it was resolved, on the motion of

Mr. Dundas, that the Company ought to recall a Governor-General who had

brought such calamities on the Indian people, and such dishonour on the

British name. An act was passed for limiting the jurisdiction of the

Supreme Court. The bargain which Hastings had made with the Chief

Justice was condemned in the strongest terms; and an address was

presented to the King, praying that Impey might be summoned home to

answer for his misdeeds.

Impey was recalled by a letter from the Secretary of State. But the

proprietors of India Stock resolutely refused to dismiss Hastings from

their service, and passed a resolution affirming, what was undeniably

true, that they were intrusted by law with the right of naming and

removing their Governor-General, and that they were not bound to obey

the directions of a single branch of the legislature with respect to

such nomination or removal.

Thus supported by his employers, Hastings remained at the head of the

Government of Bengal till the spring of 1785. His administration, so

eventful and stormy, closed in almost perfect quiet. In the Council

there was no regular opposition to his measures. Peace was restored to

India. The Mahratta war had ceased. Hyder was no more. A treaty had been

concluded with his son, Tippoo; and the Carnatic had been evacuated by

the armies of Mysore. Since the termination of the American war, England

had no European enemy or rival in the Eastern seas.

On a general review of the long administration of Hastings, it is

impossible to deny that, against the great crimes by which it is

blemished, we have to set off great public services. England had passed

through a perilous crisis. She still, indeed, maintained her place in

the foremost rank of European powers; and the manner in which she had

defended herself against fearful odds had inspired surrounding

nations with a high opinion both of her spirit and of her strength.

Nevertheless, in every part of the world, except one, she had been a

loser. Not only had she been compelled to acknowledge the independence

of thirteen colonies peopled by her children, and to conciliate the

Irish by giving up the right of legislating for them; but, in the

Mediterranean, in the Gulf of Mexico, on the coast of Africa, on the

continent of America, she had been compelled to cede the fruits of her

victories in former wars. Spain regained Minorca and Florida; France

regained Senegal, Goree, and several West Indian Islands. The only

quarter of the world in which Britain had lost nothing was the quarter

in which her interests had been committed to the care of Hastings. In

spite of the utmost exertions both of European and Asiatic enemies, the

power of our country in the East had been greatly augmented. Benares was

subjected, the Nabob Vizier reduced to vassalage. That our influence had

been thus extented, nay, that Fort William and Fort St. George had not

been occupied by hostile armies, was owing, if we may trust the general

voice of the English in India, to the skill and resolution of Hastings.

His internal administration, with all its blemishes, gives him a title

to be considered as one of the most remarkable men in our history. He

dissolved the double government. He transferred the direction of affairs

to English hands. Out of a frightful anarchy, he educed at least a

rude and imperfect order. The whole organisation by which justice was

dispensed, revenue collected, peace maintained throughout a territory

not inferior in population to the dominions of Lewis the Sixteenth or

the Emperor Joseph, was formed and superintended by him. He boasted

that every public office, without exception, which existed when he left

Bengal, was his creation. It is quite true that this system, after all

the improvements suggested by the experience of sixty years, still needs

improvement, and that it was at first far more defective than it now

is. But whoever seriously considers what it is to construct from the

beginning the whole of a machine so vast and complex as a government,

will allow that what Hastings effected deserves high admiration. To

compare the most celebrated European ministers to him seems to us as

unjust as it would be to compare the best baker in London with Robinson

Crusoe, who, before he could bake a single loaf, had to make his plough

and his harrow, his fences and his scarecrows, his sickle and his flail,

his mill and his oven.

The just fame of Hastings rises still higher, when we reflect that

he was not bred a statesman; that he was sent from school to a

counting-house; and that he was employed during the prime of his manhood

as a commercial agent, far from all intellectual society.

Nor must we forget that all, or almost all, to whom, when placed at the

head of affairs, he could apply for assistance, were persons who owed

as little as himself, or less than himself, to education. A minister

in Europe finds himself, on the first day on which he commences his

functions, surrounded by experienced public servants, the depositaries

of official traditions. Hastings had no such help. His own reflection,

his own energy, were to supply the place of all Downing Street and

Somerset House. Having had no facilities for learning, he was forced to

teach. He had first to form himself, and then to form his instruments;

and this not in a single department, but in all the departments of the

administration.

It must be added that, while engaged in this most arduous task, he was

constantly trammelled by orders from home, and frequently borne down by

a majority in Council. The preservation of an Empire from a formidable

combination of foreign enemies, the construction of a government in all

its parts, were accomplished by him, while every ship brought out

bales of censure from his employers, and while the records of every

consultation were filled with acrimonious minutes by his colleagues. We

believe that there never was a public man whose temper was so severely

tried; not Marlborough, when thwarted by the Dutch Deputies; not

Wellington, when he had to deal at once with the Portuguese Regency, the

Spanish juntas, and Mr. Percival. But the temper of Hastings was equal

to almost any trial. It was not sweet; but it was calm. Quick and

vigorous as his intellect was, the patience with which he endured

the most cruel vexations, till a remedy could be found, resembled the

patience of stupidity. He seems to have been capable of resentment,

bitter and long enduring; yet his resentment so seldom hurried him into

any blunder, that it may be doubted whether what appeared to be revenge

was anything but policy.

The effect of this singular equanimity was that he always had the full

command of all the resources of one of the most fertile minds that ever

existed. Accordingly no complication of perils and embarrassments could

perplex him. For every difficulty he had a contrivance ready; and,

whatever may be thought of the justice and humanity of some of his

contrivances, it is certain that they seldom failed to serve the purpose

for which they were designed.

Together with this extraordinary talent for devising expedients,

Hastings possessed, in a very high degree, another talent scarcely less

necessary to a man in his situation; we mean the talent for conducting

political controversy. It is as necessary to an English statesman in

the East that he should be able to write, as it is to a minister in this

country that he should be able to speak. It is chiefly by the oratory of

a public man here that the nation judges of his powers. It is from the

letters and reports of a public man in India that the dispensers of

patronage form their estimate of him. In each case, the talent which

receives peculiar encouragement is developed, perhaps at the expense

of the other powers. In this country, we sometimes hear men speak above

their abilities. It is not very unusual to find gentlemen in the Indian

service who write above their abilities. The English politician is a

little too much of a debater; the Indian politician a little too much of

an essayist.

Of the numerous servants of the Company who have distinguished

themselves as framers of minutes and despatches, Hastings stands at the

head. He was indeed the person who gave to the official writing of the

Indian governments the character which it still retains. He was

matched against no common antagonist. But even Francis was forced

to acknowledge, with sullen and resentful candour, that there was no

contending against the pen of Hastings. And, in truth, the

Governor-General’s power of making out a case, of perplexing what it was

inconvenient that people should understand, and of setting in the

clearest point of view whatever would bear the light, was incomparable.

His style must be praised with some reservation. It was in general

forcible, pure, and polished; but it was sometimes, though not often,

turgid, and, on one or two occasions, even bombastic. Perhaps the

fondness of Hastings for Persian literature may have tended to corrupt

his taste.