Part 41

The interest which has hitherto centred upon Clive is now transferred to the career of Warren Hastings. An Indian statesman by profession, and thoroughly acquainted with the wants both of native and European populations, he had entered upon the duties of the Government of Bengal in 1772. The post was not a light one: in India a people in the last stages of distress, a Government full of abuses, a small dominant population who believed their sole duty was to acquire wealth rapidly; in England a factious and fluctuating body of governors whose chief object was high dividends. Such were the conditions under which Hastings had to act. A change in the management of the land tax produced a larger revenue with less oppression; the country, freed from marauders, was in a better condition to pay taxes; but this was little. Rumours were afloat that Reza Khan, the finance minister, was peculating largely. On the accusation of Nuncomar, his old rival, he was apprehended by Hastings, who either believed the charges or acted in obedience to the Company's orders. On examination he was acquitted, but not replaced in his office, nor was Nuncomar appointed to succeed him; the administration was kept in English hands. The Viceroy, an infant, was deprived of half his allowance, and a quarrel having arisen between our old ally Shah Allum, who had made friends with the Mahrattas, and the English, Allahabad and Corah were resumed and sold to the Vizier of Oude for fifty lacs of rupees. More than that, for a further sum of forty lacs English troops were basely let to that prince to destroy his enemies, the neighbouring Afghan conquerers of Rohilcund. All these measures seem to have been dictated primarily by a desire for an increased revenue. It was at this crisis that the Regulating Act took effect, and the new councillors arrived in the Hooghly. The man of the most importance and activity among them was Philip Francis, who is now generally accepted as being the author of "Junius' Letters." The other two always voted with him, and all three came out with strong prejudices and a determination to oppose Hastings. The new Governor-General therefore found himself at once in a permanent minority, for, as before, he had but one vote in the Council. Barwell, the Indian member of the new Council, always voted with him. There arose therefore a fierce struggle for power, and the new councillors made haste to seek on all sides grounds for attacking Hastings. It was understood that they were willing to receive any charges against him. Nuncomar, who had been heavily disappointed at not receiving the vacant place of Reza Khan, charged him with having been bribed to pardon that great official; and Francis and his partisans determined to confront Nuncomar with Hastings at the council board. The Governor-General rightly refused to preside at what was virtually his own trial; but upon his dissolving the Council the three new members declared it not dissolved, and continued the inquiry. Fortune placed in the hands of Hastings the means of freeing himself from this awkward dilemma. A private charge of forgery was brought against Nuncomar, and he was tried before the new supreme court. It is impossible to say how far this charge was fostered by Hastings, he himself asserted upon oath that he had nothing whatever to do with it; at all events it was carried to its conclusion, and Sir Elijah Impey and his colleagues found the charge proved, and condemned Nuncomar to death. Impey, an old schoolfellow of Hastings, whose career showed him not to be above suspicion, is by many held to have acted corruptly; but his colleagues entirely agreed with him, nor does it seem that he did anything worse than import into India the habits and feelings of Europe when he suffered the sentence of death to be carried out. No doubt this was a shock to the moral feelings of the Hindoos, to whom forgery was not the grave offence that it is to us. However this may be, the death of Nuncomar secured the supremacy of Hastings. There was no one brave enough to bring charges either true or false against one whose vengeance seemed to have struck down the head of their religion. His supremacy was soon still further secured; by the death of Monson he found himself, by means of his own casting vote, master of the Council. One more violent struggle took place, after which he was able to act according to his own judgment, although constantly thwarted by Francis. In the height of his difficulties he had lodged a conditional resignation with his agent in London, and his agent, alarmed by the news from India, had presented it. Suddenly, in the midst of his triumph in Calcutta, a ship arrived with a new member of the Council and the news that the Governor-General had resigned. Hastings positively refused to ratify the act of his agent, which he declared was unauthorized by him. The bitter contest which arose from this subject was brought before the Supreme Court of Justice for arbitration. Sir Elijah Impey again settled the question in Hastings' favour.

[Sidenote: His opposition to the Mahrattas.]

Hastings could now turn his thoughts to what was his constant object, the aggrandizement of our power in India, and his view seems to have been to enter into close alliances with the great Mahommedan Princes, the Nabob-Vizier of Oude and the Nizam of the Deccan, to render them dependent on the English by means of large subsidies, and by their assistance oppose an effectual barrier to the great and increasing power of the Mahrattas, whom he regarded as the most dangerous rivals to the English. Affairs in the dependent Presidency of Madras gave him an opportunity for carrying out this policy. Mismanagement and peculation had been as rife there as in Bengal. The Rajah of Tanjore, a Mahratta prince, had been dispossessed in favour of the Nabob of Arcot, an old ally of the English. This measure was disallowed by the directors at home. Lord Pigot was sent out as governor to re-establish the Rajah. The same struggle between the Governor and his Council as had been seen in Calcutta took place in Madras, but proceeded to even greater extremities. The Council arrested Lord Pigot, who died a prisoner in their hands. Thus the policy of restitution was crushed, and the claims of the Mahratta Rajah of Tanjore were neglected. In Bombay, too, constant disputes had arisen with the Mahratta chiefs of Poonah, so that the whole of that great confederacy was ready for war. To appreciate the importance of such a war, it must be remembered that the Mahrattas had spread over much of India. The descendants of Sivajee, like the descendants of most Indian conquerors, had sunk into _rois fainéants_ at Satara, delegating their real power to their viceroy, called the Peishwa of Poonah, whose office was hereditary. Dependent offshoots of this power had established themselves in the hills of the Malwa under the great princes Sindia and Holkar; in Berar under a prince called the Bonslah, in Gujerat under the Guicowar, and in the extreme south in Tanjore; while bands of Mahratta horsemen had, as we have seen, seized upon Delhi, and expelled for a time Shah Allum, the Great Mogul, who had however made terms with them, and was now again seated upon his ancestral throne. With this vast power, already on bad terms with both the southern Presidencies, it was discovered that the French were intriguing. With his usual vigour Hastings was determined to forestall war, which he saw was inevitable. For this purpose, in spite of the opposition of his Council, an army was at once despatched southward to act through Bundelcund. The command was given to Colonel Goddard. But Hastings, who seldom acted a straightforward part, intrigued at the same time with the Bonslah and with Rajonaut Rao, a deposed Peishwa, now a refugee in Bombay. Upon the news that France and England had declared war, still further energy was infused into military affairs; and Chandernagore, near Calcutta, and Pondicherry, just south of Madras, two French settlements, were captured. The Mahratta war was not without its reverses. The Bombay army was surrounded near Poonah, and escaped only on ignominious terms; but Goddard upheld the honour of the English arms, and defeated Sindia and Holkar, while Captain Popham took the almost impregnable castle of Gwalior. The war was regarded as of sufficient importance to require the presence of the veteran General Sir Eyre Coote, who was despatched from England to take the command.

[Sidenote: Hastings' policy thwarted by Hyder Ali's advance.]

[Sidenote: Conclusion of the Mysore war.]

But all prospect of carrying out the ambitious schemes of Hastings for subjugating the Mahrattas was suddenly clouded. News arrived in 1780 that Hyder Ali, who had long been watching his opportunity, had pounced upon Madras. He saw the English engaged in a vast Indian war, he knew that their arms were not successful in America, he expected the speedy arrival of a large French force, his time had come at last, and he flung himself in irresistible numbers upon the Carnatic. The English were virtually taken by surprise; one army under Colonel Baylie was destroyed, a second under Sir Hector Munro saved itself by rapid flight. In a moment Hastings comprehended the new situation of affairs; the news reached Calcutta on the 23rd of September, on the 25th he was ready with a complete new plan of operations. He offered peace and alliance to the Mahrattas; he embarked all available troops for Madras; in virtue of the supremacy of Bengal, he ventured to suspend Whitewell, the incompetent Governor of Madras; he gave the command to Sir Eyre Coote, and sent also vast sums of money thither. It was to sustain this great effort, without if possible diminishing the gains of the Company, that Hastings committed the rest of those acts of oppression which were afterwards alleged against him. To supply the greed of his employers he had sold British troops to destroy the Rohillas; in his great struggle for power he had strained the law in the case of Nuncomar; to support his Mahratta and Mysore wars he stooped to actions of injustice and cruelty. The return of Sir Eyre Coote re-established affairs at Madras, he won a great victory at Porta Novo and a second at Pollilore. The general peace in 1783 put a conclusion to the war, which had been continued by Tippoo upon the death of his father Hyder Ali. Hastings had succeeded in concluding a treaty with the Mahrattas, and had his hands free for carrying on with energy operations against Mysore, the Dutch, and the French fleet under De Suffren. All the Dutch settlements had been captured; five great indecisive battles had been fought between De Suffren and Sir Edward Hughes; but no striking advantages had been won over Tippoo, who had even met with some successes on the Malabar coast. With the European nations terms had been arranged in France; with Tippoo a peace was made on the conditions of the mutual restorations of conquest.

[Sidenote: Robbery of Cheyte Singh.]

[Sidenote: Robbery of the Begums of Oude.]

To return to the conduct of Hastings. On the first alarm of war with Hyder Ali, he had demanded troops from Cheyte Singh, the Rajah of Benares, as from a feudatory of the Empire. This demand was annually renewed, together with the customary tribute of £50,000. Upon this being delayed it was raised to £500,000. This was still unpaid when Hastings determined to make a personal visit to Benares. He entered the city with an absurdly inadequate guard, and put Cheyte Singh under arrest; an insurrection was the consequence, and Hastings was for a time confined to his house by the populace and in imminent danger of his life. Perfectly calm and unmoved in the midst of his dangers, he yielded not one step; he succeeded in letting the neighbouring troops hear of his danger; Major Popham came to his rescue, and routed the people of Benares; Cheyte Singh was driven from his country, a new rajah, with a much enlarged tribute, was put in his place; his fortress at Bidzegur and all his property was seized. Hastings at once proceeded to similar acts in Oude. He entered into a nefarious compact with the Nabob to rob his mother and grandmother of their money. These two ladies lived at Fyzabad, the ancient capital of Sujah Dowlah; his son, the reigning Nabob Asaph Ul Dowlah, had withdrawn to the new city of Lucknow. The Begums possessed large landed property and Sujah Dowlah's treasure; it was agreed between Hastings and Asaph Ul Dowlah that this should be taken from them, the landed property going to the Nabob, the money being received as payment for heavy arrears due from the Nabob to the English. A lengthened siege and partial famine did not effect the purpose of the plunderers; it was found necessary to seize, to imprison, to starve, and torture two aged eunuchs, the princesses' chief friends and ministers, before treasure to the amount of about a million could be wrung from them; the excuse alleged for such unmitigated wickedness was that the Begums had intrigued for an insurrection in Oude. Again Sir Elijah Impey was on the spot to give his voice in favour of Hastings when the rumours on which these charges were based were submitted to him.

[Sidenote: Displeasure in England.]

[Sidenote: Parliamentary inquiry. 1781.]

[Sidenote: Dundas's Bill. 1783.]

[Sidenote: Fox's India Bill. Nov.]

[Sidenote: Objections to it.]

Whatever excuses might be found for such actions, in the difficulties of Hastings' position and the peculiarity of Indian habits, it was certain that the condition and rights of a Company which had become a sovereign ruler, and was at once under the necessity of demanding a loan to avoid bankruptcy, and guilty of what could not but sound to English ears as acts of the cruellest oppression, must form a chief topic of parliamentary discussion. Accordingly, in 1781, two committees had been formed to inquire into the affairs of India. Their reports were strongly condemnatory of the Company's government, and the Secretary of State for the time being accordingly demanded Hastings' recall. To this the directors, as by law they had a right to do, refused to listen, but the matter could not be dropped, and immediately after the formation of the coalition ministry Mr. Dundas produced a Bill for the regulation of India. His view was that the Governor-General's power should be increased, and the office given to some great independent nobleman such as Lord Cornwallis. Not only was this Bill regarded as a party measure, and by no means of sufficient breadth for its object, but also it was felt that the subject was one which should be handled by Government itself. In pursuance of this view, in the autumn session of the same year Fox brought forward his great India Bill. The faults to be remedied were sufficiently obvious; a trading company had by a strange turn of fortune become a governor of large provinces, and had again and again engaged in extensive wars. It was plain that the functions of the merchant and the governor were not only distinct but antagonistic. The claims of the proprietors for large dividends, and the duty of the directors to work for the financial benefit of their employers, was certain to blind them to acts of injustice which had a tendency to fill their coffers. The main principle of any great India Bill must have been the resumption by the Crown of its inherent Imperial rights, which it had suffered accidentally to fall into disuse. Accordingly, Fox proposed that all the authority which the Company had exercised should be transferred to a body of seven commissioners, nominated in Parliament and capable of holding office for four years, after which the vacancies occurring in that body were to be filled up by the Crown. To them, as trustees, was to be transferred also the whole property of the Company. But the management of this property and the commerce of the Company was placed in the hands of a subordinate council of directors, proprietors each of them of £2000 stock, acting under and subject to the orders of the superior council. The vacancies in the subordinate council were to be filled by the Court of proprietors. There were additional stipulations for the purpose of checking monopolies, the acceptance of presents, the hiring out of British forces, and changes in the tenure of land, regulations in fact attempting to remove the principal known abuses of the Indian Government. The Bill was a thorough and great Bill, and the magnitude of the subject, and the freedom which the Government enjoyed from any party pledges in the matter, should have raised it out of the sphere of party politics, but it was at once furiously assaulted. There were raised against it two objections, corresponding to the two councils which it proposed to erect. First, it was urged that it was incompatible with the dignity of the Crown that patronage so enormous as that of India should be vested even for a time in any hands but those of the King himself.[11] As Lord Thurlow said, when the Bill was before the House of Lords, "the King will in fact take the diadem with his own hands and place it on the head of Mr. Fox." What rendered this defect more glaring was, that the new committee was named in the Act, and that all seven members of it were strenuous supporters of the present administration, so that a fresh and overwhelming source of influence was secured to Mr. Fox's friends. It was urged, secondly, that even granting the necessity and wisdom of such a transference of political power, the establishment of the second council for the management of the commerce of the Company was a violent and unnecessary infraction of chartered rights. Bad financial management, as apart from their political conduct, could not be alleged against the Company, nor did it seem probable that commerce would be better managed under the direction of a parliamentary Committee, even though working through a subordinate council of merchants, than if left exclusively in mercantile hands; besides, no later than 1780, the charter of the Company had been renewed, and to deprive it of the superintendence of its own trade was a manifest breach of that charter. Such were the objections raised by the Opposition, and they were largely echoed in the country, where the coalition, as is generally the case in England, was highly unpopular. The feeling out of doors is shown by a well-known caricature which represents the triumphal procession of Carlo Fox Khan, crowned and riding on a state elephant. However, the Bill was triumphantly passed through the House of Commons, where the coalition majority was overwhelming.

[Sidenote: The King procures its rejection.]

[Sidenote: His conduct unconstitutional.]

[Sidenote: Ministers dismissed.]

But the King, who hated his ministers, and whose pride was touched in its tenderest point by this Bill, was determined that it should never become law; rather than suffer such indignity he would refuse his assent to the Bill, exerting a prerogative which had lain dormant since the reign of William III., or take refuge, as he was fond of threatening, in Hanover. He was saved from either alternative by a plan suggested to him by Lords Thurlow and Temple, which, although open to the charge of being unconstitutional, prevented the Bill from passing the Upper House. These two noblemen, using the hereditary right of British Peers to advise their sovereign, drew up and laid before George a strong memorandum against the Bill, which they called "a plan to take more than half the royal power, and by that means disable his Majesty for the rest of his reign;" and Temple suggested that the Bill might be stopped in the House of Lords if the King would authorize him to express his wishes. The King upon this supplied him with a paper to show to any Lord he pleased. The purport of it was, that "his Majesty allowed Earl Temple to say that whoever voted for the India Bill was not only not his friend, but would be considered by him as an enemy, and if those words were not strong enough, Earl Temple might use whatever words he might deem stronger and more to the purpose." The effect of this intimation, acting upon the minds of waverers and of those who prided themselves in the name of King's friends, was to secure a majority against the Bill. On the 17th of December it was lost by nineteen votes, Lord Stormont, a member of the ministry voting against it. The King thus assumed the strange position of the opponent of his own responsible ministers. In fact, he felt the power of the hated Whigs closing around him, and thought any measure justifiable which would free him from their grasp and enable him to assume that position which had been the constant aim of his policy. Moreover, he no doubt relied somewhat on the unpopularity excited by the coalition, and on the apparently unprincipled and factious conduct of the united leaders. That his conduct is incompatible with constitutional monarchy there can be no doubt. If he disliked his ministers' measures he had one straightforward course open to him;--he should have dismissed them; if their majority was overwhelming, he should have dissolved Parliament; if he could not command a majority in the new Parliament, he was bound to submit. An underhand opposition to ministers, who are alone responsible to the nation, is entirely destructive of that confidence which is necessary to the very existence of a constitutional monarchy. Of course the uproar raised in the House of Commons was great. Motion after motion condemnatory of the action of the King in the House of Lords was carried by great majorities. The ministry determined that the responsibility of removing them should be left to the King, who, perceiving the necessary consequence of his late step, on the 18th of December, sent the under secretaries to tell the ministers they were dismissed, refusing even to see them personally.

[Sidenote: Pitt accepts the Premiership. 1783.]

[Sidenote: Factious violence of the Opposition. 1784.]