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. Perceval. 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 dispatches, 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 candor, 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.
And since we have referred to his literary tastes, it would be most
unjust not to praise the judicious encouragement which, as a ruler, he
gave to liberal studies and curious researches. His patronage was
extended, with prudent generosity, to voyages, travels, experiments,
publications. He did little, it is true, towards introducing into India
the learning of the West. To make the young natives of Bengal familiar
with Milton and Adam Smith, to substitute the geography, astronomy, and
surgery of Europe for the dotages of the Brahminical superstition, or
for the imperfect science of ancient Greece transfused through Arabian
expositions--this was a scheme reserved to crown the beneficent
administration of a far more virtuous ruler. Still, it is impossible to
refuse high commendation to a man who, taken from a ledger to govern an
empire, overwhelmed by public business, surrounded by people as busy as
himself, and separated by thousands of leagues from almost all literary
society, gave, both by his example and by his munificence, a great
impulse to learning. In Persian and Arabic literature he was deeply
skilled. With the Sanskrit he was not himself acquainted; but those who
first brought that language to the knowledge of European students owed
much to his encouragement. It was under his protection that the Asiatic
Society commenced its honorable career. That distinguished body selected
him to be its first president; but, with excellent taste and feeling, he
declined the honor in favor of Sir William Jones. But the chief
advantage which the students of Oriental letters derived from his
patronage remains to be mentioned. The Pundits of Bengal had always
looked with great jealousy on the attempts of foreigners to pry into
those mysteries which were locked up in the sacred dialect. The
Brahminical religion had been persecuted by the Mahommedans. What the
Hindoos knew of the spirit of the Portuguese government might warrant
them in apprehending persecution from Christians. That apprehension, the
wisdom and moderation of Hastings removed. He was the first foreign
ruler who succeeded in gaining the confidence of the hereditary priests
of India, and who induced them to lay open to English scholars the
secrets of the old Brahminical theology and jurisprudence.
It is indeed impossible to deny that, in the great art of inspiring
large masses of human beings with confidence and attachment, no ruler
ever surpassed Hastings. If he had made himself popular with the English
by giving up the Bengalese to extortion and oppression, or if, on the
other hand, he had conciliated the Bengalese and alienated the English,
there would have been no cause for wonder. What is peculiar to him is
that, being the chief of a small band of strangers who exercised
boundless power over a great indigenous population, he made himself
beloved both by the subject many and by the dominant few. The affection
felt for him by the civil service was singularly ardent and constant.
Through all his disasters and perils, his brethren stood by him with
steadfast loyalty. The army, at the same time, loved him as armies have
seldom loved any but the greatest chiefs who have led them to victory.
Even in his disputes with distinguished military men, he could always
count on the support of the military profession. While such was his
empire over the hearts of his countrymen, he enjoyed among the natives a
popularity such as other governors have perhaps better merited, but such
as no other governor has been able to attain. He spoke their vernacular
dialects with facility and precision. He was intimately acquainted with
their feelings and usages. On one or two occasions, for great ends, he
deliberately acted in defiance of their opinion; but on such occasions
he gained more in their respect than he lost in their love. In general,
he carefully avoided all that could shock their national or religious
prejudices. His administration was indeed in many respects faulty; but
the Bengalee standard of good government was not high. Under the Nabobs,
the hurricane of Mahratta cavalry had passed annually over the rich
alluvial plain. But even the Mahratta shrank from a conflict with the
mighty children of the sea; and the immense rice harvests of the Lower
Ganges were safely gathered in, under the protection of the English
sword. The first English conquerors had been more rapacious and
merciless even than the Mahrattas; but that generation had passed away.
Defective as was the police, heavy as were the public burdens, it is
probable that the oldest man in Bengal could not recollect a season of
equal security and prosperity. For the first time within living memory,
the province was placed under a government strong enough to prevent
others from robbing, and not inclined to play the robber itself. These
things inspired good will. At the same time, the constant success of
Hastings and the manner in which he extricated himself from every
difficulty made him an object of superstitious admiration; and the more
than regal splendor which he sometimes displayed dazzled a people who
have much in common with children. Even now, after the lapse of more
than fifty years, the natives of India still talk of him as the greatest
of the English; and nurses sing children to sleep with a jingling ballad
about the fleet horses and richly caparisoned elephants of Sahib Warren
Hostein.
The gravest offences of which Hastings was guilty did not affect his
popularity with the people of Bengal; for those offences were committed
against neighboring states. Those offences, as our readers must have
perceived, we are not disposed to vindicate; yet, in order that the
censure may be justly apportioned to the transgression, it is fit that
the motive of the criminal should be taken into consideration. The
motive which prompted the worst acts of Hastings was misdirected and
ill-regulated public spirit. The rules of justice, the sentiments of
humanity, the plighted faith of treaties, were in his view as nothing
when opposed to the immediate interest of the state. This is no
justification, according to the principles either of morality, or of
what we believe to be identical with morality, namely, far-sighted
policy. Nevertheless, the common sense of mankind, which in questions of
this sort seldom goes far wrong, will always recognize a distinction
between crimes which originate in an inordinate zeal for the
commonwealth, and crimes which originate in selfish cupidity. To the
benefit of this distinction Hastings is fairly entitled. There is, we
conceive, no reason to suspect that the Rohilla war, the revolution of
Benares, or the spoliation of the Princesses of Oude, added a rupee to
his fortune. We will not affirm that, in all pecuniary dealings, he
showed that punctilious integrity, that dread of the faintest appearance
of evil, which is now the glory of the Indian civil service. But when
the school in which he had been trained and the temptations to which he
was exposed are considered, we are more inclined to praise him for his
general uprightness with respect to money, than rigidly to blame him for
a few transactions which would now be called indelicate and irregular,
but which even now would hardly be designated as corrupt. A rapacious
man he certainly was not. Had he been so he would infallibly have
returned to his country the richest subject in Europe. We speak within
compass when we say that, without applying any extraordinary pressure,
he might easily have obtained from the zemindars of the Company's
provinces and from neighboring princes, in the course of thirteen years,
more than three millions sterling, and might have outshone the splendor
of Carlton House and of the Palais Royal. He brought home a fortune such
as a Governor-General, fond of state and careless of thrift, might
easily, during so long a tenure of office, save out of his legal salary.
Mrs. Hastings, we are afraid, was less scrupulous. It was generally
believed that she accepted presents with great alacrity, and that she
thus formed, without the connivance of her husband, a private hoard
amounting to several lacs of rupees. We are the more inclined to give
credit to this story because Mr. Gleig, who cannot but have heard it,
does not, as far as we have observed, notice or contradict it.
The influence of Mrs. Hastings over her husband was indeed such that she
might easily have obtained much larger sums than she was ever accused of
receiving. At length her health began to give way; and the
Governor-General, much against his will, was compelled to send her to
England. He seems to have loved her with that love which is peculiar to
men of strong minds, to men whose affection is not easily won or widely
diffused. The talk of Calcutta ran for some time on the luxurious manner
in which he fitted up the round-house of an Indiaman for her
accommodation, on the profusion of sandal-wood and carved ivory which
adorned her cabin, and on the thousands of rupees which had been
expended in order to procure for her the society of an agreeable female
companion during the voyage. We may remark here that the letters of
Hastings to his wife are exceedingly characteristic. They are tender,
and full of indications of esteem and confidence: but, at the same time,
a little more ceremonious than is usual in so intimate a relation. The
solemn courtesy with which he compliments his "elegant Marian" reminds
us now and then of the dignified air with which Sir Charles Grandison
bowed over Miss Byron's hand in the cedar parlor.
After some months Hastings prepared to follow his wife to England. When
it was announced that he was about to quit his office, the feeling of
the society which he had so long governed manifested itself by many
signs. Addresses poured in from Europeans and Asiatics, from civil
functionaries, soldiers, and traders. On the day on which he delivered
up the keys of office, a crowd of friends and admirers formed a lane to
the quay where he embarked. Several barges escorted him far down the
river; and some attached friends refused to quit him till the low coast
of Bengal was fading from the view, and till the pilot was leaving the
ship.
Of his voyage little is known, except that he amused himself with books
and with his pen; and that among the compositions by which he beguiled
the tediousness of that long leisure, was a pleasing imitation of
Horace's Otium Divos rogat. This little poem was inscribed to Mr. Shore,
afterwards Lord Teignmouth, a man of whose integrity, humanity, and
honor it is impossible to speak too highly; but who, like some other
excellent members of the civil service, extended to the conduct of his
friend Hastings an indulgence of which his own conduct never stood in
need.
The voyage was, for those times, very speedy. Hastings was little more
than four months on the sea. In June, 1785, he landed at Plymouth,
posted to London, appeared at Court, paid his respects in Leadenhall
Street, and then retired with his wife to Cheltenham.
He was greatly pleased with his reception. The King treated him with
marked distinction. The Queen, who had already incurred much censure on
account of the favor which, in spite of the ordinary severity of her
virtue, she had shown to the "elegant Marian," was not less gracious to
Hastings. The Directors received him in a solemn sitting; and their
chairman read to him a vote of thanks which they had passed without one
dissentient voice. "I find myself," said Hastings, in a letter written
about a quarter of a year after his arrival in England,--"I find myself
everywhere, and universally, treated with evidences, apparent even to my
own observation, that I possess the good opinion of my country."
The confident and exulting tone of his correspondence about this time is
the more remarkable, because he had already received ample notice of the
attack which was in preparation. Within a week after he landed at
Plymouth, Burke gave notice in the House of Commons of a motion
seriously affecting a gentleman lately returned from India. The session,
however, was then so far advanced that it was impossible to enter on so
extensive and important a subject.
Hastings, it is clear, was not sensible of the danger of his position.
Indeed that sagacity, that judgment, that readiness in devising
expedients, which had distinguished him in the East, seemed now to have
forsaken him; not that his abilities were at all impaired; not that he
was not still the same man who had triumphed over Francis and Nuncomar,
who had made the Chief Justice and the Nabob Vizier his tools, who had
deposed Cheyte Sing, and repelled Hyder Ali. But an oak, as Mr. Grattan
finely said, should not be transplanted at fifty. A man who, having left
England when a boy, returns to it after thirty or forty years passed in
India, will find, be his talents what they may, that he has much both to
learn and to unlearn before he can take a place among English statesmen.
The working of a representative system, the war of parties, the arts of
debate, the influence of the press, are startling novelties to him.
Surrounded on every side by new machines and new tactics, he is as much
bewildered as Hannibal would have been at Waterloo, or Themistocles at
Trafalgar. His very acuteness deludes him. His very vigor causes him to
stumble. The more correct his maxims, when applied to the state of
society to which he is accustomed, the more certain they are to lead him
astray. This was strikingly the case with Hastings. In India he had a
bad hand; but he was master of the game, and he won every stake. In
England he held excellent cards, if he had known how to play them; and
it was chiefly by his own errors that he was brought to the verge of
ruin.
Of all his errors the most serious was perhaps the choice of a champion.
Clive, in similar circumstances, had made a singularly happy selection.
He put himself into the hands of Wedderburn, afterwards Lord
Loughborough, one of the few great advocates who have also been great in
the House of Commons. To the defence of Clive, therefore, nothing was
wanting, neither learning nor knowledge of the world, neither forensic
acuteness nor that eloquence which charms political assemblies. Hastings
entrusted his interests to a very different person, a major in the
Bengal army, named Scott. This gentleman had been sent over from India
some time before as the agent of the Governor-General. It was rumored
that his services were rewarded with Oriental munificence; and we
believe that he received much more than Hastings could conveniently
spare. The Major obtained a seat in Parliament, and was there regarded
as the organ of his employer. It was evidently impossible that a
gentleman so situated could speak with the authority which belongs to an
independent position. Nor had the agent of Hastings the talents
necessary for obtaining the ear of an assembly which, accustomed to
listen to great orators, had naturally become fastidious. He was always
on his legs; he was very tedious; and he had only one topic, the merits
and wrongs of Hastings. Everybody who knows the House of Commons will
easily guess what followed. The Major was soon considered as the
greatest bore of his time. His exertions were not confined to
Parliament. There was hardly a day on which the newspapers did not
contain some puff upon Hastings, signed Asiaticus or Bengalensis, but
known to be written by the indefatigable Scott; and hardly a month in
which some bulky pamphlet on the same subject, and from the same pen,
did not pass to the trunk-makers and the pastry-cooks. As to this
gentleman's capacity for conducting a delicate question through
Parliament, our readers will want no evidence beyond that which they
will find in letters preserved in these volumes. We will give a single
specimen of his temper and judgment. He designated the greatest man
then living as "that reptile Mr. Burke."
In spite, however, of this unfortunate choice, the general aspect of
affairs was favorable to Hastings. The King was on his side. The Company
and its servants were zealous in his cause. Among public men he had many
ardent friends. Such were Lord Mansfield, who had outlived the vigor of
his body, but not that of his mind; and Lord Lansdowne, who, though
unconnected with any party, retained the importance which belongs to
great talents and knowledge. The ministers were generally believed to be
favorable to the late Governor-General. They owed their power to the
clamor which had been raised against Mr. Fox's East India Bill. The
authors of that bill, when accused of invading vested rights, and of
setting up powers unknown to the Constitution, had defended themselves
by pointing to the crimes of Hastings, and by arguing that abuses so
extraordinary justified extraordinary measures. Those who, by opposing
that bill, had raised themselves to the head of affairs would naturally
be inclined to extenuate the evils which had been made the plea for
administering so violent a remedy; and such, in fact, was their general
disposition. The Lord Chancellor Thurlow, in particular, whose great
place and force of intellect gave him a weight in the government
inferior only to that of Mr. Pitt, espoused the cause of Hastings with
indecorous violence. Mr. Pitt, though he had censured many parts of the
Indian system, had studiously abstained from saying a word against the
late chief of the Indian government. To Major Scott, indeed, the young
minister had in private extolled Hastings as a great, a wonderful man,
who had the highest claims on the government. There was only one
objection to granting all that so eminent a servant of the public could
ask. The resolution of censure still remained on the Journals of the
House of Commons. That resolution was, indeed, unjust; but, till it was
rescinded, could the minister advise the King to bestow any mark of
approbation on the person censured? If Major Scott is to be trusted, Mr.
Pitt declared that this was the only reason which prevented the advisers
of the Crown from conferring a peerage on the late Governor-General. Mr.
Dundas was the only important member of the administration who was
deeply committed to a different view of the subject. He had moved the
resolution which created the difficulty; but even from him little was to
be apprehended. Since he had presided over the committee on Eastern
affairs, great changes had taken place. He was surrounded by new allies;
he had fixed his hopes on new objects; and whatever may have been his
good qualities,--and he had many,--flattery itself never reckoned rigid
consistency in the number.