Part 562

"At this period, the main point of interest changes from the Presidency of Bengal to the Presidency of Madras. There, the English were becoming involved in another war. There, they had now, for the first time, to encounter the most skilful and daring of all the enemies against whom they ever fought in India—Hyder Ali. {1720} He was of humble origin, the grandchild of a wandering 'fakir' or Mahomedan monk. Most versatile in his talents, Hyder was no less adventurous in his career; by turns a private man devoted to sports of the chase, a captain of free-booters, a partisan-chief, a rebel against the Rajah of Mysore, and commander-in-chief of the Mysorean army. Of this last position he availed himself to dethrone and supplant his master. … Pursuing his ambitious schemes, Hyder Ali became, not merely the successor of the Rajah, but the founder of the kingdom of Mysore. From his palace at Seringapatam, as from a centre, a new energy was infused through the whole of Southern India. By various wars and by the dispossession of several smaller princes, he extended his frontiers to the northward, nearly to the river Kistna. His posts on the coast of Malabar, Mangalore especially, gave him the means of founding a marine; and he applied himself with assiduous skill to train and discipline his troops according to the European models. The English at Madras were roused by his ambition, without as yet fully appreciating his genius. We find them at the beginning of 1767 engaged, with little care or forethought, in a confederacy against him with the Nizam and the Mahrattas. Formidable as that confederacy might seem, it was speedily dissipated by the arts of Hyder. At the very outset, a well-timed subsidy bought off the Mahrattas. The Nizam showed no better faith; he was only more tardy in his treason. He took the field in concert with a body of English commanded by Colonel Joseph Smith, but soon began to show symptoms of defection, and at last drew off his troops to join the army of Hyder. A battle ensued near Trincomalee, in September, 1767. Colonel Smith had under him no more than 1,500 Europeans and 9,000 Sepoys; while the forces combined on the other side were estimated, probably with much exaggeration, at 70,000 men. Nevertheless, Victory, as usual, declared for the English cause. … Our victory at Trincomalee produced as its speedy consequence a treaty of peace with the Nizam. Hyder was left alone; but even thus proved fully a match for the English both of Madras and of Bombay. … He could not be prevented from laying waste the southern plains of the Carnatic, as the territory of one of the staunchest allies of England, Mahomed Ali, the Nabob of Arcot. Through such ravages, the British troops often underwent severe privations. … At length, in the spring of 1769, Hyder Ali became desirous of peace, and resolved to extort it on favourable terms. First, by a dexterous feint he drew off the British forces 140 miles to the southward of Madras. Then suddenly, at the head of 5,000 horsemen, Hyder himself appeared at St. Thomas's Mount, within ten miles of that city. The terrified Members of the Council already, in their mind's eye, saw their country-houses given up to plunder and to flame, and were little inclined to dispute whatever might be asked by an enemy so near at hand. Happily his terms were not high. A treaty was signed, providing that a mutual restoration of conquests should take place, and that the contracting parties should agree to assist each other in all defensive wars. In the career of Hyder Ali, this was by no means the first, nor yet the last occasion, on which he showed himself sincerely desirous of alliance with the English. He did not conceal the fact, that, in order to maintain his power and secure himself, he must lean either on them or on the Mahrattas. … In this war with Hyder, the English had lost no great amount of reputation, and of territory they had lost none at all. But as regards their wealth and their resources, they had suffered severely. Supplies, both of men and of money, had been required from Bengal, to assist the government at Madras; and both had been freely given. In consequence of such a drain, there could not be made the usual investments in goods, nor yet the usual remittances to England. Thus at the very time when the proprietors of the East India Company had begun to wish each other joy on the great reforms effected by Lord Clive, and looked forward to a further increase of their half-yearly Dividend, they were told to prepare for its reduction. A panic ensued. Within a few days, in the spring of 1769, India Stock fell above sixty per cent."

_Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), History of England, 1713-1783, chapter 67._

ALSO IN: _Meer Hussein Ali Khan Kirmani, History of Hydur Naik, chapters 1-17._

_L. B. Bowring, Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan, chapter 8._

INDIA: A. D. 1770-1773. Climax of English misrule. Break-down of the East India Company's government. The Indian Act of Lord North.

"In 1770 Bengal was desolated by perhaps the most terrible of the many terrible famines that have darkened its history, and it was estimated that more than a third part of its inhabitants perished. Yet in spite of all these calamities, in spite of the rapidly accumulating evidence of the inadequacy of the Indian revenues, the rapacity of the proprietors at home prevailed, and dividends of 12 and 12½ per cent., as permitted by the last Act, were declared. The result of all this could hardly be doubtful. In July, 1772, the Directors were obliged to confess that the sum required for the necessary payments of the next three months was deficient to the extent of no less than £1,293,000, and in August the Chairman and Deputy Chairman waited on the Minister to inform him that nothing short of a loan of at least one million from the public could save the Company from ruin. The whole system of Indian government had thus for a time broken down. The division between the Directors and a large part of the proprietors, and between the authorities of the Company in England and those in India, the private and selfish interests of its servants in India, and of its proprietors at home, the continual oscillation between a policy of conquest and a policy of trade, and the great want in the whole organisation of any adequate power of command and of restraint, had fatally weakened the great corporation. In England the conviction was rapidly growing that the whole system of governing a great country by a commercial company was radically and incurably false. … The subject was discussed in Parliament, in 1772, at great length, and with much acrimony. Several propositions were put forward by the Directors, but rejected by the Parliament; and Parliament, under the influence of Lord North, and in spite of the strenuous and passionate opposition of Burke, asserted in unequivocal terms its right to the territorial revenues of the Company. A Select Committee, consisting of thirty-one members, was appointed by Parliament to make a full inquiry into the affairs of the Company. It was not, however, till 1773 that decisive measures were taken. {1721} The Company was at this time absolutely helpless. Lord North commanded an overwhelming majority in both Houses, and on Indian questions he was supported by a portion of the Opposition. The Company was on the brink of ruin, unable to pay its tribute to the Government, unable to meet the bills which were becoming due in Bengal. The publication, in 1773, of the report of the Select Committee, revealed a scene of maladministration, oppression, and fraud which aroused a wide-spread indignation through England; and the Government was able without difficulty, in spite of the provisions of the charter, to exercise a complete controlling and regulating power over the affairs of the Company. … By enormous majorities two measures were passed through Parliament in 1773, which mark the commencement of a new epoch in the history of the East India Company. By one Act, the ministers met its financial embarrassments by a loan of £1,400,000 at an interest of 4 per cent., and agreed to forego the claim of £400,000 till this loan had been discharged. The Company was restricted from declaring any dividend above 6 per cent. till the new loan had been discharged, and above 7 per cent. till its bond-debt was reduced to £1,500,000. It was obliged to submit its accounts every half-year to the Lords of the Treasury; it was restricted from accepting bills drawn by its servants in India for above 300,000 a year, and it was obliged to export to the British settlements within its limits British goods of a specified value. By another Act, the whole constitution of the Company was changed, and the great centre of authority and power was transferred to the Crown. … All the more important matters of jurisdiction in India were to be submitted to a new court, consisting of a Chief Justice and three puisne judges appointed by the Crown. A Governor-General of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, was to be appointed at a salary of £25,000 a year, with four Councillors, at salaries of £8,000 a year, and the other presidencies were made subordinate to Bengal. The first Governor-General and Councillors were to be nominated, not by the East India Company, but by Parliament; they were to be named in the Act, and to hold their offices for five years; after that period the appointments reverted to the Directors, but were subject to the approbation of the Crown. Everything in the Company's correspondence with India relating to civil and military affairs was to be laid before the Government. No person in the service of the King or of the Company might receive presents, and the Governor-General, the Councillors, and the judges were excluded from all commercial profits and pursuits. By this memorable Act the charter of the East India Company was completely subverted, and the government of India passed mainly into the hands of the ministers of the Crown. The chief management of affairs was vested in persons in whose appointment or removal the Company had no voice or share, who might govern without its approbation or sanction, but who nevertheless drew, by authority of an Act of Parliament, large salaries from its exchequer. Such a measure could be justified only by extreme necessity and by brilliant success, and it was obviously open to the gravest objections from many sides. … Warren Hastings was the first Governor-General: Barwell, Clavering, Monson, and Philip Francis were the four Councillors."

_W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the 18th Century, chapter 13 (volume 3)._

ALSO IN: _J. Mill, History of British India, book 4, chapter 9 (volume 3)._

INDIA: A. D. 1773-1785. The First English Governor-General. Administration of Warren Hastings. Execution of Nuncomar. The Rohilla War. Annexation of Benares. Treatment of the Begums of Oudh.

"The Governor-General was not at once the potential personage he has since become. The necessity of ruling by a Dictator (a dictator on the spot, though responsible to superiors at home) had not yet become obvious; and the Governor-General had no superiority in council, except the casting vote in case of an equal division. Whether he could govern or not depended chiefly on whether he had a party of two in the council. Two out of the four, with his own casting vote, were enough; and without it, he was not really governor. This is not the place in which to follow the history of the first general council and its factions, apart from the consequences to British interests. It must suffice to say that at the outset, three out of four of the council (and those the new officials from England) were opposed to Hastings. It has been related that the internal administration of Bengal under Clive's 'double system' was managed by the Nabob's prime-minister. This functionary had a salary of £100,000 a year, and enjoyed a high dignity and immense power. One man who aspired to hold the office in Clive's time was the great Hindoo, Nuncomar, … eminent in English eyes for his wealth, and his abilities, and much more in native estimation for his sanctity as a Brahmin, and his almost unbounded social power. … The Maharajah Nuncomar was a great scoundrel—there is no doubt of that; and his intrigues, supported by forgeries, were so flagrant as to prevent his appointment to the premiership under the Nabob. Such vices were less odious in Bengal than almost anywhere else; but they were inconvenient, as well as disgusting, to the British; and this was the reason why Clive set aside Nuncomar, and appointed his rival competitor, Mohammed Reza Khan, though he was highly reluctant to place the highest office in Bengal in the hands of a Mussulman. This Mussulman administered affairs for seven years before Hastings became Governor-General; and he also had the charge of the infant Nabob, after Surajah Dowla died. We have seen how dissatisfied the Directors were with the proceeds of their Bengal dominions. Nuncomar planted his agents everywhere; and in London especially; and these agents persuaded the Directors that Mohammed Reza Khan was to blame for their difficulties and their scanty revenues. Confident in this information, they sent secret orders to Hastings to arrest the great Mussulman, and everybody who belonged to him, and to hear what Nuncomar had to say against him." The Governor-General obeyed the order and made the arrests, "but the Mussulman minister was not punished, and Nuncomar hated Hastings accordingly. He bided his time, storing up materials of accusation with which to overwhelm the Governor at the first turn of his fortunes. That turn was when the majority of the Council were opposed to the Governor-General, and rendered him helpless in his office; and Nuncomar then presented himself, with offers of evidence to prove all manner of treasons and corruptions against Hastings. {1722} Hastings was haughty; the councils were tempestuous. Hastings prepared to resign, though he was aware that the opinion of the English in Bengal was with him; and Nuncomar was the greatest native in the country, visited by the Council, and resorted to by all his countrymen who ventured to approach him. Foiled in the Council, Hastings had recourse to the Supreme Court [of which Sir Elijah Impey was the Chief Justice]. He caused Nuncomar to be arrested on a charge brought ostensibly by a native of having forged a bond six years before. After a long trial for an offence which appeared very slight to Bengalee natives in those days, the culprit was found guilty by a jury of Englishmen, and condemned to death by the judges."

_H. Martineau, British Rule in India, chapter 9._

"It may perhaps be said that no trial has been so often tried over again by such diverse authorities, or in so many different ways, as this celebrated proceeding. During the course of a century it has been made the theme of historical, political, and biographical discussions; all the points have been argued and debated by great orators and great lawyers; it has formed the avowed basis of a motion in Parliament to impeach the Chief-Justice, and it must have weighed heavily, though indirectly, with those who decided to impeach the Governor-General. It gave rise to rumours of a dark and nefarious conspiracy which, whether authentic or not, exactly suited the humour and the rhetoric of some contemporary English politicians. … Very recently Sir James Stephen, after subjecting the whole case to exact scrutiny and the most skilful analysis, after examining every document and every fact bearing upon this matter with anxious attention, has pronounced judgment declaring that Nuncomar's trial was perfectly fair, that Hastings had nothing to do with the prosecution, and that at the time there was no sort of conspiracy or understanding between Hastings and Impey in relation to it. Nothing can be more masterly or more effective than the method employed by Sir James Stephen to explode and demolish, by the force of a carefully-laid train of proofs, the loose fabric of assertions, invectives, and ill-woven demonstrations upon which the enemies of Hastings and Impey based and pushed forward their attacks, and which have never before been so vigorously battered in reply. … It may be accepted, upon Sir James Stephen's authority, that no evidence can be produced to justify conclusions adverse to the innocence of Hastings upon a charge that has from its nature affected the popular tradition regarding him far more deeply than the accusations of high-handed oppressive political transactions, which are little understood and leniently condemned by the English at large. There is really nothing to prove that he had anything to do with the prosecution, or that he influenced the sentence. … Nevertheless when Sir James Stephen undertakes to establish, by argument drawn from the general motives of human action, the moral certainty that Hastings was totally unconnected with the business, and that the popular impression against him is utterly wrong, his demonstration is necessarily less conclusive. … On the whole there is no reason whatever to dissent from Pitt's view, who treated the accusation of a conspiracy between Impey and Hastings for the purpose of destroying Nuncomar, as destitute of any shadow of solid proof. Whether Hastings, when Nuncomar openly tried to ruin him by false and malignant accusations, became aware and made use in self-defence of the fact that his accuser had rendered himself liable to a prosecution for forgery, is a different question, upon which also no evidence exists or is likely to be forthcoming."

_Sir A. Lyall, Warren Hastings, chapter 3._

"James Mill says, 'No transaction perhaps of his whole administration more deeply tainted the reputation of Hastings than the tragedy of Nuncomar.' A similar remark was made by William Wilberforce. The most prominent part too in Nuncomar's story is played by Sir Elijah Impey. … Impey, in the present day, is known to English people in general only by the terrible attack made upon him by Lord Macaulay, in his essay on Warren Hastings. It stigmatises him as one of the vilest of mankind. 'No other such judge has dishonoured the English ermine since Jefferies drank himself to death in the Tower.' 'Impey, sitting as a judge, put a man unjustly to death, in order to serve a political purpose.' 'The time had come when he was to be stripped of that robe which he had so foully dishonoured.' These dreadful accusations I, upon the fullest consideration of the whole subject, and, in particular, of much evidence which Macaulay seems to me never to have seen, believe to be wholly unjust. For Macaulay himself I have an affectionate admiration. He was my own friend, and my father's, and my grandfather's friend also, and there are few injunctions which I am more disposed to observe than the one which bids us not to forget such persons. I was, moreover, his successor in office, and am better able than most persons to appreciate the splendour of the services which he rendered to India. These considerations make me anxious if I can to repair a wrong done by him, not intentionally, for there never was a kinder-hearted man, but because he adopted on insufficient grounds the traditional hatred which the Whigs bore to Impey, and also because his marvellous power of style blinded him to the effect which his language produced. He did not know his own strength, and was probably not aware that a few sentences which came from him with little effort were enough to brand a man's name with almost indelible infamy. … My own opinion is that no man ever had, or could have, a fairer trial than Nuncomar, and that Impey in particular behaved with absolute fairness and as much indulgence as was compatible with his duty. In his defence at the bar of the House of Commons, he said, 'Conscious as I am how much it was my intention to favour the prisoner in everything that was consistent with justice; wishing as I did that the facts might turn out favourable for an acquittal; it has appeared most wonderful to me that the execution of my purpose has so far differed from my intentions that any ingenuity could form an objection to my personal conduct as bearing hard on the prisoner.' My own earnest study of the trial has led me to the conviction that every word of this is absolutely true and just. Indeed, the first matter which directed my attention to the subject was the glaring contrast between Impey's conduct as ascribed in the State Trials and his character as described by Lord Macaulay. {1723} There is not a word in his summing-up of which I should have been ashamed had I said it myself, and all my study of the case has not suggested to me a single observation in Nuncomar's favour which is not noticed by Impey. As to the verdict, I think that there was ample evidence to support it. Whether it was in fact correct is a point on which it is impossible for me to give an unqualified opinion, as it is of course impossible now to judge decidedly of the credit due to the witnesses, and as I do not understand some part of the exhibits."

_J. F. Stephen, The Story of Nuncomar, pages 2-3, 186-187._