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 honorable retreat. Under these
circumstances, Macleane thought himself justified in producing the
resignation with which he had been entrusted. 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 realized, 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 of Fort
William and of all the neighboring 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-humor, 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 vigor 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
neighbors. 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 bhang 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
favorable 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 vigor of his
mind altogether unimpaired. He was capricious and fretful, and required
much coaxing to keep him in good-humor. 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 recognized at once that
face and figure which he had not seen for more than half a century, and,
forgetting his salam 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 cooperate
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 honors 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, 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 labor in India, from the labor 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, honor, 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 honorable 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 jurisprudence 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 of 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 jail, 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 harams 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.