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Chapter 3 – The First Governor-Generalship in India

Thus stood matters early in 1774, when the passing of the Regulating Act of 1773 had changed the constitution of the East India Company at home and of their government in India, and made Warren Hastings the first Governor-General of all our Indian territories with powers and functions defined by a Parliamentary statute. The exploits of Lord Clive whereby the Company had acquired large territorial revenues, the rumours of enormous wealth flowing into the coffers of the Company and into the pockets of its servants, the reports of scandalous misrule and corruption, had all combined to stir up the attention of the nation and of the English Ministry; and Lord Clive himself had said in the Commons that Indian affairs were very ill managed in India and in London. The Company applied to the Ministers for assistance in their financial embarrassment; Lord North was willing enough to give help, but on very hard terms. The Company’s right to hold any territory was directly impugned on constitutional grounds by the English Government; although it was vigorously defended by Burke, who said that the rapine of Parliament was shaking the Company’s credit. England’s position in 1773 might be likened to that of some one who should

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have unexpectedly inherited vast estates in remote countries far apart from each other, and should have discovered that their title was bad, their management worse, that on his western estate he was being involved in very costly and unpleasant litigation with occupants who claimed to sit rent free, and on his eastern property in all the troubles caused to absentee proprietors by dishonest and incapable agency. Alter seven years’ contest England had won her cause both in America and India; but in the administration of distant dependencies she was as yet totally inexperienced, and she had to study that difficult art through the long period of misfortune and humiliating failure into which, under Lord North’s guidance, she was just entering. That the term of Warren Hastings’ government coincided for ten years with Lord North’s premiership, is a fact to be always remembered in appreciating the situation of the Anglo-Indian Governor; we must take account of the inexperience of the nation, the circumstances of a troubled time, the animosity of parties inflamed by resentments and disappointments, and the irritation of the English people.

It is useful to recollect that the tea thrown into Boston harbour in December, 1773, belonged to the East India Company, and had been allowed free export by way of helping them commercially; for the incident fixes important dates, and marks a curious point of connection between eastern and western complications. And while it is remarkable that a petty concession to the Indian trading company should have been the signal for rebellion in the American colonies, such an electric reverberation across the horizon illustrates the tempestuous condition of the whole political atmosphere.

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The state of the administration in Bengal, before the passing of Lord North’s Act of 1773, is very fairly described in a letter written in November, 1773 by Warren Hastings to the Court of Directors:

“May I be permitted” (he wrote), “in all deference to your commands, to offer it as my opinion that whatever may have been the conduct of individuals, or even of the collective members of your former administrations, the blame is not so much attributable to them as to the want of a principle of government adequate to its substance and a coercive power to enforce it. The extent of Bengal and its possible resources are equal to those of most states in Europe. Its difficulties are greater than those of any, because it wants both an established form and powers of government; it derives its actual support from the unremitted labour and personal exertions of individuals, instead of the vital influence which flows through the channels of a regular constitution. Our constitution is nowhere to be traced but in ancient charters, which were framed for the jurisdiction of your trading settlements, the rates of your exports, and the provision of your annual investment. I need not observe how incompetent these must prove for the government of a great kingdom, and for the preservation of its riches from private violence and embezzlement.”

Such being the actual condition of affairs, the Act of 1773 may be regarded as the first essay by the British Parliament in constructing a regular government for India, the main object being to establish a self-acting balance of powers, and to prevent abuses by a system of co-ordinate authorities. It is necessary to give some very brief explanation of the provisions of this statute, because out of its operation arose immediately all the collisions, antagonisms, and disputes with the Council, the Court, and the two other Presidencies, by which the first Governor-General at Calcutta was so long encompassed.

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The governorship of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa was vested in a Governor-General, with four Councillors, having authority over Madras and Bombay; and all correspondence relating to civil government or military affairs was to be laid by the Directors of the Company in London before His Majesty’s Ministers, who could disapprove or cancel any rules or orders. A Supreme Court of Judicature, appointed by the Crown, was established in Calcutta. The Bill was opposed by Burke, who said that not one regulation of it could be supported by fair and solid arguments, though he spoke in approval of the appointment of Hastings to the Governor-Generalship. The Act was intended to set in order our Indian affairs and to terminate the confusion between conquest and commerce, by placing the country under some recognised jurisdiction and responsible authority; but in the business of administering dependencies Parliament was still, as has been said, at its apprenticeship, and the machinery of this statute was very ill contrived. The Ministers had undertaken a general supervision of the Company’s proceedings, but very little direct responsibility was placed upon them for what was done. In the Governor-General’s Council the opinion of the majority was made decisive in a case of differences, so that the Governor-General was liable to be entirely disabled by an adverse vote; and three of his new Councillors had been selected as the Ministers’ delegates to put a curb on the Company’s representatives. The Court of Judicature was completely independent of all local authority, being intended to maintain a control over the doings of the Company’s servants. But as no local legislature existed, and as the laws which this court was

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to administer, and their range or province, were left uncertain, and as no tradition, precedent, or common law of the land was at hand to guide them, the judges found themselves practically invested with full discretion to interpret their own authority and the prerogative of the executive government.

Here then was a court set up with an untried and indefinite jurisdiction over the acts of an ill-formed hybrid Anglo-Indian government, in the midst of a very peculiar and in some respects primitive society, that had been morally and materially distracted by political revolutions, and whose habits and ideas were then quite novel to Europeans. Upon such a people it descended, like a new and mysterious Avatar, in the multiform embodiment of four lawyers from Westminster Hall of very ordinary learning and ability, wielding powers equal or superior to the visible government, and armed with a strange mechanical apparatus of legal formula and process quite unintelligible to Indians, and totally unsuited to the environment.

“If,” wrote Warren Hastings, in reviewing his administration eleven years later,

“If the same act of the legislature which confirmed me in my station of President over the Company’s settlements in Bengal had invested me with a control as extensive as the new denomination I received by it indicated; if it had compelled the assistance of my associates in power instead of giving me opponents; if, instead of creating new expectations, which were to be accomplished by my dismission from office, it had imposed silence on the interested clamours of faction, and taught the servants of the Company to place their dependence upon me, where it constitutionally rested; if, when it transferred the real control over the Company’s affairs from the Direction to the Ministers, instead of extending,

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it had limited the claims of patronage, which every man possessing influence himself, or connected with those who possessed it, thought he had a right to exert; and if it had made my continuance in office to depend on the rectitude of my intentions, and the vigour with which they were exerted, instead of annexing it to a compliance with those claims – I should have had little occasion at this period to claim the public indulgence for an avowal of duties undischarged. But the reverse took place in every instance.”

Warren Hastings is here alluding to one grave consequence of the system introduced by the Act of 1773; that it rendered the aid and support of the Ministers indispensable to a Governor-General, who, if he were not connected with political parties at home, could only secure their favour and protection by placing at their disposal a large share of his Indian patronage. He had to serve not only the friends of the Directors but also the friends of the Government for the time being; and the very means employed to satisfy the party in power inevitably irritated those in opposition. The scheme itself, however, was foredoomed to miscarriage; it produced divided counsels and a discordant executive from the very beginning; nor is it matter for surprise that our first experiment in framing administrative relations between England and her Indian dominions should have signally failed. In the eighteenth century the question of governing India from London presented in their highest degree all the difficulties and enigmas inherent in the administration of dependencies that are separated from the sovereign State by distance, by differences of religion, race, climate, and by the strongest possible contrast of social ideas and political traditions. Even in the attempt to govern our American colonies,

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where no such contrast existed, we blundered and failed, though in a very different way, still more signally than with our Asiatic conquests. And although we have lately managed things better on the principle of allowing self-government to outlying communities of our own nationality, yet we are so far from having arrived at a satisfactory solution of the problem, that the history of the government of dependencies (which has yet to be written) must be confessed, so far as alien races are concerned, to be for the most part a record of failure in all ages and countries.

Three members of Council, Francis, Clavering, and Monson, with the Chief Justice and Judges of the Supreme Court, landed together at Calcutta in October, 1774; the fourth, Barwell, was a servant of the Company in India. They were landed exactly at noon under the full glare of an Indian sun; the heat and confusion took all dignity from the procession to Government House; and Hastings had not even put on a ruffled shirt to receive them. They accepted very coolly the civilities of the Governor-General; and they complained that the honours paid to them on arrival were insufficient. The minutes and correspondence that were exchanged on this important point show that from the moment when Francis, Clavering, and Monson set foot in Bengal, the quarrel began which lasted until two had died and the third had departed to carry on the war at home. The letter of instruction to the new government, when formally opened by the Council thus inaugurated, was found earnestly to recommend before all things “the most perfect harmony among yourselves.” But as it also enjoined inquiry into past abuses, or into any dissipation

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or embezzlement of the Company’s money, and the application of effective remedies for such disorders, the three Councillors acted upon this injunction without losing a day. They called for all the confidential correspondence that had passed between Hastings and his agent at the Vizier’s court; and when Hastings refused to produce it, they summoned the agent to bring the papers with him from Lucknow. They sent orders to the commandant of the Company’s brigade that was still with the Vizier of Oude, to demand immediate payment of the forty lakhs due for assistance in expelling the Rohillas, and to withdraw within fourteen days if the money were not paid. They condemned the treaty of Benares under which Allahabad had been ceded to Oude; and they declared that the finances of Bengal had been utterly ruined by mismanagement. In short, they reversed and countermanded in every direction the foreign policy of their Governor-General; and the next mail took home a report from the Council full of complaints and accusations against him, with a long rejoinder from Hastings, whose only adherent was Barwell.

For a government that had been opened with exhortations to harmony, this was a somewhat discordant prelude; and the note thus struck was diligently maintained. When, in January, 1775, the Vizier of Oude died, the Council majority cancelled the treaties made with him, extorted from his successor a large increase of the subsidy paid for the Company’s troops stationed in Oude, insisted on the cession of two valuable districts, Ghazipur and Benares, from the new Vizier, and backed up their Resident at Lucknow in upholding the claims of the late Vizier’s widow, the celebrated Bhow Begum, to retain as her personal

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appanage an immense treasure and possession of certain rich districts. The Vizier, Asaph-u-Dowlah, represented in vain that his own mother was his inveterate enemy, that she had detained all his father’s personal property and a vast treasure that he had accumulated, particularly the wealth obtained from Rohilcund; that his troops were in mutiny and his treasury empty. He found himself loaded with debts and losses at the beginning of his reign; in April, 1775, he had a pitched battle with his refractory battalions, losing three hundred of his own men and killing six hundred mutineers; his mother refused all help, declaring that she would sooner throw her jewels and money into the river than advance the Nawab a single rupee, and rejected the intervention of the British Resident. The Nawab’s affairs fell, as the Resident reported, into a most distracted condition; and all the steps taken by the Council majority went straight against the policy of strengthening the state of Oude; while as they also led up to those transactions out of which arose afterwards two of the main charges against Hastings, it is well to remember that he himself was so entirely opposed to them that the majority claimed great merit with the Directors for having carried the treaty against his remonstrances. The Directors, in noticing these proceedings, observed with singular satisfaction “the attention paid by our servants to the interests of their employers.” Meanwhile the three Councillors who formed the majority had been sedulously discharging their duty of investigating past abuses. It is plain from a private memorandum8 left by Francis, that they had begun by assuming Hastings to be

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thoroughly corrupt, and went on to look for evidence in support of a foregone conclusion, In their search for these proofs they pulled to pieces the whole administration; and Francis admits that they reversed his foreign policy in order that by breaking clown his influence they might obtain some revelation of his secret transactions.

After condemning the Governor-General’s public acts, they next proceeded to take up charges against his personal conduct. A letter from the Rani of Burdwan, alleging that Hastings had accepted a gratification, was received and considered by the Council. Next day appeared upon the scene Nuncomar; he was in politics an opportunist, and his entry was well timed and characteristic. He delivered to Mr. Francis, at an interview, a statement purporting to give particulars of enormous sums received as presents by Hastings, and setting out the causes why he (Nuncomar) gravely suspected Hastings of corruption, peculation, and connivance at embezzlement on a grand scale. In a second letter, he deplored the Governor-General’s habit of preferring private emolument to the welfare of the country, and asked leave to be heard before the Council in support of the revelations that he had made, which the Council by a majority at once allowed. Several other petitions alleging dishonesty or profligate expenditure of public money against the Governor-General, were also received. One of them had come, as has been said, from the Rani of Burdwan, a lady possessing a large estate, upon whom Mr. Francis at once proposed to confer the honorary distinction usually awarded by the Government to rank and loyalty in India. Hastings said it would be a personal indignity to the Governor-General,

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but the motion was carried. The heat and fury of this mortal struggle – for Hastings had everything at stake and stood resolutely at bay – survive and still glow through the minutes of the proceedings, which appear either to have been taken down by a clerk, or to have been in some way dictated by the combatants; and the following extract from a minute by Hastings describes his position:

“On the 13th instant, a motion was made by Colonel Monson, and supported by General Clavering and Mr. Francis, that Rajah Nuncomar should be called before the Board, and required to produce the proofs of his allegations.

“To this I strongly objected, declaring that I looked upon the members of the majority themselves as my accusers, that they were therefore unfit to sit in judgment upon me; that I could not suffer the dignity of the First Magistrate of this Government to be debased, by sitting to be arraigned as a criminal at the Council Board, of which he was the President, by a man of character so notoriously infamous as that of Rajah Nuncomar; and that I disclaimed their right, in any respect, to erect themselves into a tribunal to judge my conduct; that I had no objection, and would consent to their forming themselves into a Committee for the purpose of obtaining such information as they required, but would not suffer them to king such a business before the Board. They persisted in their purpose, and I declared the meeting dissolved.”

Three times in March did the majority insist on hearing at the Council-table charges against their President “It would appear,” they recorded, “that there is no species of peculation from which the honourable Governor-General has thought it reasonable to abstain”; and in another minute they observed that Nuncomar’s discoveries explained how the honourable Governor-General had amassed about £400,000 (“which he is said

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to possess”) in two and a half years. Three times Hastings dissolved the sittings, repeating his offer to answer all inquiries before a committee, and withdrawing with Barwell from the Council chamber.

James Mill, who in his History of India twists and strains all his arguments against Hastings, cannot see why the Governor-General should have refused to preside at a Council meeting for the purpose of hearing Nuncomar accuse him of base and criminal behaviour. The reason he alleged, says Mill, was the dignity of the accused, and the baseness of the accuser; and Mill solemnly demonstrates that upon general principles these are quite inadmissible pretexts for stifling public inquiry. Mill’s turn of mind was that which has been termed doctrinaire; he was rigid in his moral axioms but loose in their applications; he staked out his general principle like a net across the line of argument, and tried to drive all his victims into it. He must have seen that the objection of Hastings was only to the manner of the inquiry (for he agreed to a special committee of investigation), and as such was unanswerable, since it is hard upon any man, above all upon an Indian Governor-General, to be required to preside at his own trial. However, Hastings and Barwell departed; General Clavering took the vacant chair; Nuncomar appeared and swore he had paid large sums to the Governor, producing also a Persian letter sealed with the name of Muni Begum, and purporting to be addressed by her to Nuncomar, stating that she had given Hastings a great bribe; whereupon the three Councillors, after vainly summoning Hastings to return, then and there ordered him to refund these illegal gains, amounting to about £35,000.

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If the Council majority really supposed these proceedings to be necessary or expedient in the public interest, they certainly showed themselves to be very little conversant with the business of administration. They threw themselves eagerly into the work of receiving and even suggesting accusations, confabulating with accusers, scrutinising official papers, and generally in preparing and promoting a prosecution against their chief. “Was it for this,” asked Hastings, “that the legislature of Great Britain formed the new system of government in Bengal, and armed it with powers extending to every part of the British Empire in India It could never have been the intention of the English Ministry or the Court of Directors, when they appointed Hastings by name in the statute as Governor-General, and prescribed unity and concord as the primary condition of success, that the first use to be made of these powers should be an attempt by his colleagues to prosecute him publicly, to annul his powers, and degrade his office. They acted as if they had been sent out on a special commission to bring Hastings to trial and condign punishment upon charges of flagrant misconduct; they employed ways and means that were rash, dangerous, and unfair; and by thus suddenly pushing Hastings to the brink of ruin they made themselves largely responsible for all that ensued. They may have been persuaded that their motives were good, but their object was undoubtedly to supplant him, to drive him from the country, and to obtain the reversion of his office for one of themselves9. In December, 1774, Francis had been hardly two

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months in India, and probably all three Councillors had much under-estimated the character of the man whom they were attacking. Francis wrote to Lord North in February, 1775, that, “without denying him (Hastings) some little talents of the third or fourth order, we were as much deceived with regard to his abilities and judgments as to his other qualifications. I look back to my own prepossessions in his favour as to a sort of delirium, from which he himself has recovered me.”

But events very speedily showed that the real hallucination of the Councillors lay in a different quarter. Within a month from the time when Nuncomar had tendered his accusations against Hastings, Hastings prosecuted Nuncomar and others for conspiracy. They were charged with having forced one Kamal-u-Din by threats and menaces to present to the Council a petition falsely accusing the Governor-General of divers enormous and scandalous offences; and the judges, after examining witnesses, held Nuncomar and two others to bail. It was evident that Hastings had his back to the wall and was now fairly crossing swords with his antagonists, for by this prosecution he struck directly at Nuncomar; and the Councillors ranged themselves openly behind the man whom they were backing. They all went to visit Nuncomar, thereby paying him a very unusual official compliment, “as an innocent man and the victim of State policy”; they entertained fresh charges of peculation, and enlarged the scope of their investigations. Three weeks later, on May 6th, came the arrest of

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Nuncomar on the famous charge of forging and publishing a bond, upon the information of one Mohun Persad, an old and bitter enemy with whom he had a lawsuit; when the judges, after a hearing that lasted twelve hours, committed Nuncomar to the common jail. Meanwhile Muni Begum had disowned as a fabrication the letter to Nuncomar which he had produced; whereupon she was at once turned out of her guardianship by the Council, who appointed Nuncomar’s son in her stead. The vigour and rapidity with which these home-thrusts were exchanged between the antagonists is very remarkable; it is as if they were fiercely fighting hand to hand. Hastings resembles a man suddenly set upon by his enemies, when the swords clash together, and he defends himself until at a critical moment some friendly rapier runs his foremost assailant right through the body. Mohun Persad’s charge came so opportunely and decisively that Hastings’ enemies unhesitatingly accused him of instigating it; Burke and Francis stamped the imputation upon him with unwearied reiteration; and it had become an article of popular belief since Macaulay declared that no one but an idiot or a biographer ever doubted its truth. Nuncomar wrote to the Council on his commitment, that the consequence of having incurred the Governor-General’s resentment appeared in his letter being dated from the common jail, and prayed for interposition in his behalf. But during the course of the trial no such imputation was suggested; and although the point has been argued on both sides with much ability, minuteness, and acrimony, there is in fact no tangible ground for denying that the prosecution originated in an ordinary and regular way, out of a civil suit

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that had been going on for two years, until on the establishment of the Supreme Court Mohun Persad’s attorney advised criminal proceedings.

Nuncomar prayed the Council to intercede for his transfer to a less irksome place of imprisonment, pleading that his caste and health were imperilled in the jail, and General Clavering laid stress on the importance to the public of the life of a man who could prove a Governor-General’s venality. But the Chief Justice, after sending an English physician to make inquiry, and after consulting the Pundits, merely ordered that his confinement should be made as easy as possible. His trial began before an English jury on June 8th, and lasted until the 16th; the heat must have been at its maximum in Calcutta., yet the judges wore their heavy wigs continually, that no forms might be wanting. The alleged forgery arose out of a transaction of thirteen years before, and the fact, if true, must have been long known to the complainant. The witnesses to the bond were dead: the hostility of Mohun Persad to Nuncomar was notorious; and it has been thought then and since that upon the evidence for the prosecution, taken alone, the accused might have escaped conviction, if a maladroit question put by Nuncomar to one of his own witnesses had not led to further questions by the judges under which the witness broke down. The prisoner was convicted: his application for leave to appeal was summarily rejected by the judge; and when his advocate presented a petition for respite of sentence, which one juryman had been induced to sign, he only elicited a harsh rebuke from Impey, who was offended at Nuncomar being described as an unhappy victim. Moreover, it has been clearly

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shown that when Clavering, Monson, and Francis were asked, as representing the executive government, to intercede with the Court for a respite, they refused on the ground that the business had no relation to the public concerns of the country. A pathetic letter to Francis from Nuncomar himself, imploring his interposition, seems to have had no answer at all, and a few days afterwards he was executed.

Sir James Stephen, in his excellent book on Nuncomar and Impey, has explained that Macaulay’s vivid picture of the execution, which has become historic, was mainly drawn from a description written by the sheriff who superintended the proceedings. The moment of dying brings out the strong points of a high-caste Hindu’s faith and character; whatever his life may have been, he always faces death steadily, and Nuncomar suffered with composure and fortitude. He had played the game of politics in his own way, after the manner of Ma time, and he probably thought that he had been fairly beaten with his own weapons. Nor is it likely that his feelings at paying forfeit were more bitter than those of many a man who in other countries and ages has staked his life upon some dangerous and unscrupulous plot against a powerful adversary. The public hanging of a man of Nuncomar’s caste, age, and rank for such an offence as forgery undoubtedly shocked the sentiments of the native spectators, and the rigour of the punishment amounted to injustice. But Macaulay, who followed Sir Gilbert Elliot’s speech on Impey’s impeachment, has exaggerated the horror and dismay caused by the execution; for it must be remembered that India had for centuries been under rulers who had left the Hindus no reason whatever

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for supposing that the sanctity of a Brahmin’s life would be respected by foreign judges or governors.

Some days after Nuncomar’s death General Clavering produced in Council a letter to himself, in which Nuncomar declared that those whom he had accused before the Council were destroying him to save themselves, being aided and abetted by the judges who had unjustly condemned him. Upon a proposal made by Hastings that this letter should be transmitted to the judges, Francis said that it contained insinuations that were wholly unsupported and libellous, and that it ought to be burned by the common hangman. The petition was expunged from the Council’s record; but Hastings privately sent a copy to the Chief-Justice, who produced it in defending himself at the bar of the Home of Commons. When Francis had afterwards to reconcile this conduct with his vehement assertions that Hastings and Impey had conspired to commit the judicial murder of Nuncomar, he could only allege that this secret giving of an official paper proved an understanding between them, and that the Council majority were in mortal fear of judges who had already dipped their hands in blood, and who were manifestly at the Governor-General’s disposal. But although it does seem that they were startled and silenced for the time by Nuncomar’s fate, yet if at the moment they verily believed Nuncomar to have died by foul play, three such men as Clavering, Monson, and Francis could scarcely have been so base and fainthearted as to treat his last appeal with ignominy and simulated disdain.

It may perhaps be said that no trial has been so often tried over again by such diverse authorities, or in so

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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. Two Lord Chancellors have commented on it; and it has furnished an apparently inexhaustible subject for literary criticism and sharp-edged controversy over the smallest details. The present writer will therefore be readily excused for not attempting to enter far upon such well-trodden ground.

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

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based and pushed forward their attacks, and which have never before been so vigorously battered in reply. The rancour of the language used by such men as Sir Gilbert Elliot and all the leading managers of the impeachment, is only equalled by its carelessness; it illustrates a stormy Parliamentary atmosphere and a generally low range of the political barometer, which go far to account for the misfortunes of those who, like Hastings, were exposed to the violence of parties.

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; for the circumstances which have been strung together to support the belief in his guilt are all reconcilable with a theory of his innocence. They merely explain the rumour; they are like the scattered incidents that may be faint indications of a true historic event, or may only account for the formation of a myth. 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, and we may reasonably hesitate about standing surety to this extent for the undiscoverable

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motives and behaviour of a man in the situation of Hastings. With his reticence, self-command, consummate mastery of his instruments, fertility of resource, and firmness of purpose, he was not likely to blunder in such a, simple, easy, and yet dangerous movement as would be required to set going the prosecution without leaving traces that might lead to his detection in after years. “He was,” observes Sir James Stephen, “apparently a curiously cautions, secret man.” The fact remains unshaken that Nuncomar tried to ruin the Governor-General, and would probably have succeeded if he himself had not been instantaneously crushed; nor is it easy to agree with Sir James Stephen’s view that Hastings, by interfering in the prosecution, incurred a tremendous risk of utter ruin for no reason at all. If the Governor-General desired to encourage or promote a prosecution against a man who was known to have come within the four corners of the English law, he could undoubtedly have conveyed an intimation to Mohun Persad with little or no risk of discovery; and the fact that Impey tried the man with great patience, forbearance, and exact formality, might prove nothing against an intention to hang him, but only that he was too wise to strain the law superfluously. 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

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forgery, is a different question, upon which also no evidence exists or is likely to be forthcoming. But if a hint to prosecute could rid the Governor-General of a formidable and treacherous enemy, it is by no means improbable that he may have thought himself warranted in delivering so opportune and decisive a counter-stroke; and most men of his stamp would have done likewise.

There can be no doubt that Nuncomar’s arrest had sharply checked the combined attack upon Hastings; its leader was suddenly struck down as by a chance shot, and the Governor-General had time to rally his spirits for an obstinate resistance. The state of his mind may be seen in a letter which he previously wrote in March to Lord North:

“I now most earnestly entreat that your Lordship – for on you, I presume, it finally rests – will free me from the state I am in, either by my immediate recall, or by the confirmation of the trust and authority of which you have hitherto thought me deserving, on such a footing as shall enable me to fulfil your expectations, and to discharge the debt which I owe to your Lordship, to my country, and my Sovereign.

“The meanest drudge, who owes his daily subsistence to daily labour, enjoys a condition of happiness compared to mine, while I am doomed to share the responsibility of measures which I disapprove, and to be an idle spectator of the ruin which I cannot avert.”

On the same day he wrote to his agent in England, Colonel Macleane, and to another friend, that he had resolved to return to England by the first ship of the next season, if the first advices from England should contain a disapprobation of the treaty of Benares, or of the Rohilla war, and should mark an evident disinclination against him. He left it to their discretion to make

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such use of this resolution as they should think proper. His next letter of April 29th to the same persons, as given by Mr. Gleig, contains no further allusion to this resolution. It is written at the climax of the storm of accusations against which he is striving, when his adversaries are closing round him, and when his Council have sent home a despatch reporting that he is universally condemned in India as a guilty man. On May 18th, however, he writes a third letter in a very different tone. Nuncomar is in jail “and in a fair way to be hanged”; he entreats his correspondents to study carefully the official papers that are sent to them in order that they may understand the course of events during the last month; and in a postscript he retracts the resolution communicated to them on March 27th. The whole tenor of this letter expresses a conviction that upon full information the authorities at home will support him against the majority, and that “men whose actions are so frantic will not be permitted to remain in charge of so important a trust.” He evidently thought that the eager hostility of his assailants had carried them too far; but though it is plain that he regarded Nuncomar’s imprisonment as a triumph, this attitude is too natural in his situation to throw any light upon the question whether he himself had any surreptitious share in his enemy’s discomfiture. The minutes of September, 1775, evidently commemorate a fierce encounter. The Governor-General charges the majority with employing declamation and invective against him. They reply that they have used neither, but rely on proofs, positive and presumptive; and they add that after the death of Nuncomar “the Governor is well assured that no man

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who regards his own safety will stand forward as his accuser.” To which Hastings rejoins in these words only: “I have declared on oath before the Supreme Court that I neither advised nor encouraged the prosecution of Maharajah Nuncomar. It would have ill become the first magistrate in the settlement to have employed his influence either to promote or dissuade it.”

The disputes and open hostilities between the two parties in the Council continued throughout the following twelve months, and spread into every transaction of the government. The majority proceeded to reverse all the acts that had been made by Warren Hastings as Governor before their arrival. He had, as will be remembered, gradually discontinued the system of double government whereby the criminal jurisdiction was left with the native officers of the titular Nawab of Bengal, by introducing regular courts in their room; and he had removed Mahomed Rem Khan, who had been the chief native administrator under that system. The Council majority now abolished the new provincial courts, restored the jurisdiction of the Nawab, and reappointed Mahomed Reza. In regard to foreign affaire the policy of the Council majority towards the Oude Vizier had proved ruinous to their ally; for owing to his mutinous army, his powerful and intractable mother, and the incessant demands made on him by the British Resident for arrears of debt, Asaph-u-Dowlah’s predicament was mort distressful; and the whole country appears, by the description given in the letters from the Resident at Lucknow, to have been falling away into masterless confusion. On the western side of India the Company’s government at Bombay had taken possession

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of Salsette Island, and in order to secure their acquisition they had formed an alliance with a Mahratta chief named Ragoba, and had sent a body of troops to support his attempt to reinstate himself in power at Poona, where he had formerly usurped the rulership but had been since expelled. As the Bombay authorities in thus beginning a war without sanction from Calcutta hall exceeded their power, and as the expedition was in itself rash and impolitic, the Governor-General in Council sent orders conveying strong disapproval, and desiring that all military operations should be stopped. But the Bombay government so vehemently represented the military and political objections against an abrupt cessation of hostilities, that Hastings thought they had gone too far to break off with honour or safety, and must be allowed to carry through the business up to a point where they might decently get out of it. The expedition was badly conducted and signally unsuccessful; it very nearly came to a disastrous end, although the English managed to keep Salsette. The Council naturally threw on Warren Hastings all the responsibility of having refused to insist peremptorily on the withdrawal of our troops, and in this transaction Burke subsequently found material for one of his sharpest charges.

Affairs in the Madras Presidency went on no better than in Calcutta or Bombay. The Nawab of the Carnatic desired to seize the possessions and property of the Rajah of Tanjore, a tributary chief, with whom the Company had made a treaty some years earlier. The Madras government at first disapproved of the Nawab’s intention, but very soon afterwards took part with him, and sent troops to aid the Nawab in an attack

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on the Rajah, who was subdued and imprisoned. As this was in direct contravention of instructions that had been given by the Court of Directors, they dismissed the Madras governor, and Lord Pigot was sent out to replace him and to set matters right. He accordingly proceeded to restore the Rajah of Tanjore, but in the meantime the Nawab of the Carnatic had made large assignments of the Tanjore revenue to the notorious Paul Benfield and others, who were not disposed to lose their securities, and who had friends in Council. So Lord Pigot found himself, like Hastings, in a minority; and when he attempted to carry his own measures with a high hand, he was arrested by order of the major party, whose authority was obeyed by the army; he was thrown into jail, and there died before the orders from England to release and recall him could arrive. The Council at Calcutta, holding that all power vested in a majority, and undismayed by this somewhat extreme and truculent application of the principle, naturally supported their brethren at Madras, and on this occasion they were joined by Hastings, who might certainly have shown more fellow-feeling for the troubles of a governor beset by vindictive councillors. It must be supposed that he believed himself obliged to disown Lord Pigot’s imprudent attempt to override the legal limits of a governor’s authority; for he had never allowed the heat of his own conflict with his Council to draw him into a similar predicament. The Bombay government sympathised with Lord Pigot; the Court of Directors, in high indignation, dismissed all the members of Council, and ordered the military officers who had arrested the governor to be tried by court-martial.

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It must be admitted that the new system of governing our Indian possessions had not, up to this time, fulfilled the objects of establishing harmony and a firm, efficacious administration. The relations of the Presidency governors and the different native States of India were still undoubtedly uncertain, ill-defined, irregular, and not to be controlled from Calcutta without great risk of serious complications and misunderstandings, owing to distance and difficulty of communications. The Council of the Governor-General was distracted by violent internal animosities, and was only united in open hostilities against the Supreme Court of Judicature; the minor governments were insubordinate, having both entangled themselves in unjust and rather disreputable wars; while in London the governing body was enfeebled and dislocated by antagonistic interests and intrigues. Under the system of party warfare, as it was waged in England at the end of the eighteenth century, patronage was essential to political predominance, for a decisive superiority in this arm was to the Minister what the possession of a strong arsenal is to a commander in the field; and as Indian appointments offered unlimited resources to a hard-fighting Cabinet it was this as much as anything else that brought Indian affairs within the Parliamentary arena. Lord North seems to have contemplated taking formal possession, in the Crown’s name, of all the Company’s Indian territory; a measure which Hastings, whose ideas constantly anticipated long subsequent events, had at one time been grievously suspected by the Company of favouring. Lord North certainly endeavoured to retain a preponderating influence, through his nominees, over the Court of Directors

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in London and the Council in Calcutta; he wished to set aside Hastings and to replace him by General Clavering, who had some Parliamentary connection. To these views and intentions a powerful opposition was made by the East India Company, who had their own advocates in the House of Commons, and who denounced the proposed assumption of sovereignty as a tyrannical confiscation of private property. Thus the conflict of parties, the clashing of interests, and the anarchy produced by the ridiculous constitution of the local Indian governments, prevented the establishment of any definite policy or plan of administration in the conduct of Indian affairs.

Men appointed to govern distant and unsettled provinces, inhabited and surrounded by alien races, are more like naval commanders on the high sea Chan constitutional governors. There is no power of reference to public opinion or to headquarters; if the steering is by votes of the ship’s officers it will run a very tortuous course. All these diverse elements of weakness and confusion combined to encompass Hastings, to deprive him of support upon very slippery ground, to strew his path with obstacles, and greatly to increase the risk of any false step.

The feud between the Governor-General in Council and the judges. in Calcutta arose inevitably out of the vague character of the Court’s jurisdiction, as expressed by the Act and the Charter. The wording of these instruments reflected the hesitation and irresolution of the legislators, who were in truth unable to make up their minds upon certain cardinal points, because they were not yet prepared by accurate knowledge of facts or by experience to undertake the construction of a scheme

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of judicature adapted to the peculiar needs of a situation that had no precedent in the constitutional history of the kingdom. In the first place, the provinces of the executive government and the Supreme Court respectively were left without clear demarcation, and every communication between them left each party in a highly electrical condition. The Court heard that the Council had recorded on their minutes something disparaging to their body, and demanded a copy of the record. The Council refuse, whereupon the judges threaten the Council with the utmost rigour of the law against defamation, and paraphrase Horace for their benefit by declaring – “Just and tenacious of the great purpose for which it was His Majesty’s pleasure to send us to this country, neither the tumultuous clamour of the multitude nor the angry frown of authority shall ever move us.” In the second place, it was impossible to determine, and it has always been doubted, how far, and with what qualifications, the Court’s jurisdiction could be exercised throughout the districts which paid revenue to the Company, and particularly whether the judges had power to review and control the proceedings of the Company’s district courts, and of its revenue administration, including the zemindars.

There have been times in the annals of every country when powerful classes and interests have been greatly concerned in avoiding any precise declaration of the public law, and when all title-deeds are so irregular that no one cares to demand a scrutiny. No one as yet ventured openly to assume the sovereignty of our Indian acquisitions; so that all our first projects of constructive administration were affected by this instability

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at their base. Hastings, with his usual clear-headed boldness, desired to throw aside the pretext of governing in the name of the titular Nawab of Bengal, believing that it merely caused uncertainty and embarrassment. His view was supported by a ruling of the judges, who refused to recognise any sovereignty in the Nawab; but the Council majority were against him. In discussing the Court’s rule Hastings said openly that “no subtleties or distinctions of political sophistry will conceal the possession of power where it is universally exercised and felt in its operation”; and he proposed that, unless instructions to the contrary should be received, “we do stand forth in the name of the Company as the actual Government of these Provinces, and assume the exorcise of it in every instance without concealment of participation.” Ten years later this was actually done, and every one now agrees that Hastings was right; but in 1775 Francis and others outvoted him, so the confusion of fictitious jurisdictions continued.

The Supreme Court finally determined not to decide the point whether the king was or was not sovereign of Bengal, holding that Parliament had cautiously avoided it.

Sir James Stephen gives, in his book upon Nuncomar and Impey, a very accurate and complete account of the quarrel between the Court and the Council, with a full explanation of the issues between them. It may be sufficient here to say that the Court, while admitting that the administration of the country was vested in the Governor-General and Council, claimed and exercised authority to entertain actions against all persons in the Company’s service, and also against the zemindars who

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held the land and were constructively employed in the collection of its revenues. Any administrative act or order might thus be, and many were, challenged, and had to satisfy the forms and procedure of Westminster Hall. The Council thereupon declared that the whole machinery of the public business was at a standstill when officers were at any moment exposed to ruinous and vexatious prosecutions; that the Court was usurping, without warrant, all the real power in the country, and that there was scarcely any sort of government, however necessary and expedient, that did not expose its highest officials to suits against them in the Supreme Court. The judges rejoined to the effect that their first duty was to protect the people from official oppression; that nowhere was such oppression more notoriously rife than in the collection of land revenue; that the real objection of the Company’s servants and the zemindars was to being made answerable to any law at all; and that, as for the Court’s jurisdiction, the Court alone could define it. The conflict of jurisdictions is an inevitable stage in the early political organisation of all States, as soon as the great departments of public business begin to take their proper shape; and it was sure to arise on the first establishment of the co-ordinate authorities in a distant province with no sovereign power present on the spot to arbitrate between them. When such disputes reached their climax they could only be decided by force, and on one well-known occasion the Sheriff of Calcutta, with an armed force, was opposed and arrested by the Company’s sepoys. Nor was this by any means the last instance of resistance by the Indian executive to a writ

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of the Supreme Court, for similar controversies have since been frequently renewed. But a hundred years ago the art of adjusting English institutions to the necessary conditions of their existence in a totally different climate was little understood; the science of jurisprudence had not taken up such problems; there was great ambiguity about the law, and in practice each side tried to reduce the other’s claims to an absurdity. Burke admitted that our territorial acquisitions in India were of a new and peculiar description, unknown to the ancient constitution of England, and held on anomalous tenures not easily brought within the verge of English jurisprudence. It may be added that the institutions which we imported into India were equally strange and incomprehensible by the light of Asiatic statecraft, for under all native governments, supreme or subordinate, the ultimate judicial and executive powers were still so closely united in the same persona that their deliberate disjunction in Bengal must have seemed to the people a device of extraordinary fatuity, contrary to the first principles of political mechanics. When, therefore, a revenue officer, acting under the orders of the Governor-General in Council, enforced some process of coercion against a revenue defaulter, and immediately found himself served with a writ from the Supreme Court which compelled him to defend an action in Calcutta some hundred miles away, or to be arrested and imprisoned if he did not obey – such a dilemma puzzled the people and seemed amazing to them. The rough arbitrary system of revenue collection which the English had taken over from the native government was often used oppressively and corruptly; but the device of correcting it by

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actions at law and arrests on “mesne process” only increased the confusion. The truth is that outside Calcutta there were at that time no laws at all, while the government had no power and not much inclination to make any; so that in the provinces the administration of justice was in a condition not unlike that of Ireland under the Tudors, when the Lord Justices dispensed English law within the pale, and beyond it neither held their own courts nor recognised any other jurisdiction.

During the earlier period of the quarrel between the Court and the Council, Hastings, standing apart from his colleagues, maintained his intimacy with Impey and endeavoured to concert remedies for the manifest evils and defects of this situation. He admitted that the revenue officers had often acted oppressively, and that the Court’s protection had been useful to the people; and with his usual muteness he proposed a plan that cut at the root of the putter.

“The truth is,” he wrote, “that a thing done by halves is worse done than if it were not done at all. The powers of the Court must be universal or it would be better to repeal them altogether. The attempt to make distinctions has introduced the most glaring absurdities and contradictions into an Act which virtually declares the British sovereignty over the provinces even in the qualifications which are used to limit it.”

The measures proposed by Hastings for quieting all these disputes and uncertainties were certainly broad and drawn upon an ample scale. It may be gathered from his correspondence that during the year 1776 he sent home proposals for placing all Bengal openly under British sovereignty to be exercised through the Company; and that he would have given the Supreme Court

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full control over all the provincial courts of justice, thus abolishing all these troublesome and unintelligible distinctions and limitations of jurisdiction. With the native states whose alliance might be desirable, he would have concluded engagements in the name of the Crown in order to give strength and dignity to the connexion. In communicating his plans to Lord North, on whose support he very erroneously counted, he mentioned that Sir Elijah Impey approved them, and he intimated that he had no complaint to make against the attitude of the Court towards the government. No one can deny that Warren Hastings possessed, to a degree rare at that period, the talent of political organisation; for his projects, though premature, were all sketched out on the lines that have been subsequently followed in building up our Indian empire. He saw that the old political fabric was too completely ruined to serve any longer even the purpose of a convenient fiction; he proposed to pull it down and to reconstruct it upon the foundation of facts. In the following passages he takes a rapid and comprehensive survey of the situation, given so briefly that it may be worth extracting:

“On my arrival in Bengal, I found this government in possession of a great and rich dominion, and a wide political system which has been since greatly extended, without one rule of government but what descended to it from its ancient commercial institutions, or any principle of policy but such as accident or the desultory judgment of those in actual power recommended. It was necessary to restore the authority of government to the source from which its powers originated; to assume the direct control instead of allowing it to act by a concealed and weakened influence; to constitute an uniform and effectual mode for the management and collection of the public revenue; to establish regular courts for the administration

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of civil and criminal justice; to give strength and utility to its political connexions, and to transfer a share of its wealth to Great Britain without exhausting its circulation.”

The lest words of this extract must not be overlooked, for they indicate one large source of all the troubles against which Hastings, less fortunate than his successors, had to contend. It was not sufficient in those days that the administration of our transmarine possessions in any part of the world should be solvent, and should lay no burden on the imperial exchequer – they were also expected to yield a certain profit, fiscal or commercial, to Great Britain. And while such was the general principle of our colonial policy, no one doubted that our Indian possessions, acquired and held under a trading charter, ought to pay interest on the investment. In those days Indian commerce not only followed but carried the flag; and conquest was still treated as a subordinate and incidental contingency. In the present time this position has become reversed; for although the struggle among the great trading nations of the world is as keen as ever, it is now not conquest that is made under cover of commercial enterprise, but commerce that pushes forward and occupies fresh territory upon considerations, more or less genuine, of political expediency. Warren Hastings, indeed, was the last Governor-General who had to find dividends out of revenue, or could be censured for dissipating in wars and subsidies the money that should have been employed in buying produce for export to the home markets.

Up to the middle of the year 1776 Hastings continued to make head against foes in Council at Calcutta, and a strong adverse party at home. Francis wrote home

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despondently, in March, 1776, that while Monson and Clavering were in woeful plight from sickness, and Barwell only alive because death did not think him worth taking, Hastings was “much more tough than any of us, and will never die a natural death.” Francis himself was losing spirits and health; insomuch that Impey, who hated him profoundly, prophesied that if Hastings should be removed, “Francis will be with God before the news arrives.” In strife and sickness they worked on until at last the death of Colonel Monson in September, 1776, gave the Governor-General predominance in Council; for his casting vote, with Barwell’s steady adherence, threw Clavering and Francis into the minority. The lead thus obtained Hastings never afterwards relinquished, so that the whole of his long subsequent administration bears the full impress of his character. He lost no time in turning out Bristow, who had been sent by the Council majority to the important post of Resident at the Court of Oude, and in reinstating Middleton, his own original nominee. Everything now depended on the choice of Monson’s successor. Sir Elijah Impey wrote to Lord Thurlow proposing himself for the vacancy, and Hastings naturally showed much anxiety about the matter. Yet in a letter to his English agent he declared characteristically that even if a hostile colleague were sent out, and the scales were then again turned against him, nothing but death or the king’s direct order should dislodge him from the Governor-Generalship.

This determination was very soon put to a sharp and sudden test. While Hastings, no longer checked by the adverse party in Council, was laying out and pressing onward his plans of administrative reform, and was pursuing

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his policy of consolidating a system of alliance with the leading native powers, his resignation of the Governor-Generalship had been tendered and accepted in London. We have seen10 that in March, 1775, when encompassed and driven to bay by assailants and accusers, he had formally announced to his friends who acted for him at home that if the Rohilla war and his treaty with Oude should be condemned at headquarters, he should at once leave India. It may be laid clown as an axiom that if a man determines twelve months beforehand what step he will take in an important contingency, he will certainly repent of his pledge when he is called upon to fulfil it; but Hastings at Calcutta was forced to trust much to his London agents, and in this as in another still more serious matter he suffered greatly from the zeal of his friends. The Court of Directors did in fact pass a guarded kind of censure upon the Rohilla war; nevertheless when in 1776 the question arose of removing Hastings from the Governor-Generalship, the real motive was not so much disapproval of his policy as desire for his place. Clavering and Francis, who both hoped to succeed Hastings, had spared no pains to damage his reputation with their Parliamentary friends, and a strong party in the India House, backed by Ministerial instigations, was formed to carry a vote of recall. In the Court of Directors it was passed by a majority of one, and although it was rescinded by a large majority in the Court of Proprietors, Colonel Macleane, seeing Hastings threatened with prosecutions, and supposing that his principal wished to secure an honourable retreat from a precarious position, sent in on his behalf a resignation of the

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Governor-Generalship on the understanding that he retired with honour and with complete indemnity from all future molestation. The Directors accepted the compromise and reported to the Ministers that Mr. Hastings desired to resign. Mr. Wheler was nominated to succeed him, and Clavering, who was gazetted to the Bath, was appointed to hold office ad interim until Wheler should arrive.

In June, 1777, despatches reached Calcutta communicating these changes to the Council, where the altercations between Hastings and Clavering had recently revived – as Francis wrote, and as the minutes of proceedings amply testify – “with redoubled bitterness and fury.” “Our superiors,” Hastings truly observed, “will have long since ceased to look in our consultations for temperate and friendly communications in the search of truth.” If, indeed, they had looked into those papers for some due to what was going on, they might have gathered it from the cool and cutting replies by Hastings to the violent and vain protests of the minority against “acts of despotism that would disgrace even the government of Morocco.” He had turned the tables on his enemies, and was not the man to waste his opportunity.

In this atmosphere of heat and exasperation the effect produced by the arrival in Calcutta of the orders replacing Hastings by Clavering may easily be imagined. The opening of the despatches produced an immediate explosion. The Council chamber became the scene of an exciting but not very dignified contest between Hastings who, supported by Barwell, refused to give up office, and Clavering who, backed by Francis, took the oaths as Governor-General ad interim, seized the despatches

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from Europe, and demanded the keys of the fort and treasuries. Each party seems to have presided and deliberated at a separate table, exchanging point blank minutes and issuing contradictory orders. Clavering ordered the commandant of the fort to obey him. Hastings directed him to refuse obedience, and the commandant stood by Hastings, who, as Macaulay notices, was always popular with the army. Hastings appealed to the judges. Clavering agreed to await their decision; and the judges, like the army, took the side of Hastings, deciding without loss of time positively and unanimously against Clavering. Sir James Stephen believes that when Hastings wrote long afterwards that he was “at one time indebted to Impey’s support for the safety of his fortune, honour, and reputation,” the allusion was to the services rendered him by the judges on this occasion; not, as Macaulay assumes confidently, to the trial of Nuncomar. But the words certainly read more like a reference to some confidential transaction than to such a public and formal proceeding as the Court’s finding upon a case submitted for opinion. On the other hand, Hastings could hold his tongue so well, that if Impey had really connived with him to hang Nuncomar, it is almost incredible that he should have alluded in this passing way to such a secret; although he might have alluded to Impey’s support in the matter if it had been given without any collusion or private understanding. Moreover, the award of the judges in 1777 did undoubtedly save Hastings from official annihilation, sine if at that moment he had been compelled by an adverse decree to make room for his enemies, he would have been utterly abandoned and driven into

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obscurity; for the grounds upon which he maintained that his resignation had been unauthorised or at any rate subsequently revoked would hardly have satisfied the Ministers at home. With the Court at his back he triumphed easily. He was now able to retaliate by declaring that Clavering in his haste to become Governor-General had vacated his own Councillorship, and was thus officially in the air; but even Francis saw that there had been too much heat and precipitation. There was a general agreement to drop the business, and two months later Sir John Clavering died.

When the letters of Clavering and Francis, reporting that Hastings had not only refused to resign but had tried to dismiss General Clavering, reached England, George the Third was highly indignant at this “daring step,” and wrote to Lord North that the dignity of Parliament would be annihilated if Hastings, Barwell, and the judges were not all removed. But the East India proprietors stood by Hastings, discerning him to be the best man for their interests in a stormy time. Burgoyne had surrendered at Saratoga: the French had just declared war; and on the whole the Ministers could not venture to send out a new and untried Governor-General to India. So Warren Hastings was now supreme in the Calcutta Council, for Mr. Wheler, who succeeded Clavering, was a man of no weight; and Sir Eyre Coote, who arrived later as the military member, did not oppose him systematically. The measures which he carried about this time are worth notice as showing how much of our present administrative methods and of our political system in India is due to his initiation. He established, against strenuous opposition by Francis in Council, and notwithstanding

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the disapprobation of the Court of Directors, an office for inquiring into and fixing the rateable value of lands in Bengal, and for recording the rights and tenures of the cultivating and landowning classes. Such investigations have always been exceedingly unpopular with the class that is interested in defeating them; but from the days of the Roman empire (when settlements were made on a system very similar to that of modern India) the careful valuation of land and record of tenure have always formed the essential basis of assessments under a government that depended on the land revenue. In India this system had fallen into desuetude until Hastings revived and readjusted it, and the example which he thus set has been followed everywhere in British India, though unluckily Lord Cornwallis thought to improve on it by making the assessment permanent in Bengal. The second measure passed by Hastings was the transfer of the disciplined troops maintained under treaty by the Nawab of Oude to the service of the Company, who undertook to pay and command them in exchange for an assignment of land revenue equal to their cost. Hastings described this as little more than a change of form to provide for regular payment and proper discipline of a soldiery whom the Nawab kept in a chronic state of mutiny. But it was the formal beginning of that remarkable and extensive organisation of subsidised forces and contingents, which has played a curious part in our Indian ware and treaties, which is an element of insecurity as well as of strength, and which may yet enter upon some new phase in our calculations of the collected military resources of the empire.

But it is possible that Hastings did not sufficiently

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remember that with irresistible authority comes also full personal responsibility. Although Francis, the sole survivor of the three hostile Councillors, could no longer thwart him in India, he could still inflame and heap fuel on all the resentments and animosities that were accumulating against him at home; while Hastings, confident in his own superior capacity and knowledge of Indian affairs, and in his rising reputation and popularity in Bengal, was triumphantly overriding objections to his plans and policy. Out of the events and transactions of the period into which he was now entering arose all the charges that were afterwards most heavily pressed against him by the Committee of Impeachment. It is of little use at the present time to discuss critically the motives by which the Governor-General was actuated in continuing the war with the Mahrattas, in which the Bombay government had so recklessly entangled itself. A military force had been sent to support the attempt of Ragonath Rao, an exile and pretender to the Mahratta chiefship, to overturn the actual government at Poona. Ragoba, as he was usually called, had on his aide executed a treaty ceding to the English, among other places, Bassein and Salsette, which are so close to Bombay that the present city stands partly on Salsette Island. The Bombay authorities, being anxious to strengthen and extend their position on the west toast, to make their Presidency pay its way by some increase of revenue, and to obtain political ascendency at Poona, entered into this very speculative enterprise without consulting the Governor-General at Calcutta. Such bargains with political refugees are familiar but almost always futile devices. The pretender invariably promises

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far more than he can perform; he usually loses more than he gains by the support of foreign arms; and failure not only ruins his party at home but greatly damages and discredits his friends abroad. In this case the result produced no exception to the rule. The Company’s troops sent to reinstate Ragoba got very roughly handled on the plains of Arras, where we fought the first of the long series of battles between the English and the Mahrattas, almost all of which have been well and honourably contested, and hardly won by the victors. We began, as will be seen, by a defeat; for although the English soldiers and the sepoys advanced bravely upon the Mahratta guns, they were checked by the sweeping multitudinous rush of the Mahratta cavalry; a large body of the enemy got into our rear by declaring that they were Ragoba’s men; there was confusion between friends and foes, the cry of treachery was raised, and the whole force fell back in great disorder, losing many English officers who tried gallantly to rally their men. It was our first experience of the Mahrattas, and the sharpest reverse that the Company’s arms had as yet suffered from an Indian adversary. The expedition failed totally, and Ragoba came back on our hands in great discomfiture. When the Bengal government received from Bombay a copy of the treaty with Ragoba, they had written at once peremptorily disallowing it, and declaring the war to be “impolitic, dangerous, unauthorised, and unjust”; but before their letter reached Bombay the war had begun, and although after the fight at Arras the Bombay government could scarcely maintain that these views, so pointedly enforced by the Mahratta sabre, were altogether unsound, yet they pleaded

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hard against the abandonment of Ragoba and of the lands he had ceded to them. They had taken their payment in advance by occupying Salsette and Bassein, and refused to restore them to the victorious party at Poona.

The whole business was indefensible; but the points occupied were very important, and the Court of Directors sanctioned their retention. Hastings, although he condemned the original enterprise as rash and ill managed, thought that by retreating precipitately and abandoning what we had taken we should only lose more reputation and incur greater danger of a counter-attack; so he proposed that we should hold our ground and face our reverses. In his opinion our honour and interest demanded that we should assume an attitude of this kind as a preliminary means of extricating ourselves decently from an awkward complication. Colonel Upton was accordingly deputed direct from Calcutta to Poona with instructions to endeavour to restore peace on the basis of our retention of Salsette and Bassein; but the reluctance of both aides to give way on this point protracted negotiations up to the end of 1776, and in 1777 matters took a new and alarming turn. The complexion of European affairs evidently portended a fresh outbreak of hostilities between France and England, for which both governments were by this time making preparations. A French adventurer named the Chevalier St. Lubin had induced the French minister to entrust him with a commission to visit India, reconnoitre the situation, and to report on the practicability of landing a force upon the coast from the Isle of France. He arrived at Poona early in 1777, bringing presents and letters to the Mahratta Court from the King of France. The Mahratta

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government naturally took this opportunity of requiting us for our exertions in Ragoba’s cause by encouraging these French overtures, to the alarm and indignation of the English, who knew that France was about to join the American colonies against us. As the Mahrattas within India, and the French outside, were the only powers of whom Anglo-Indian governments then took serious account, a combination between them threatened grave dangers; and the French were now treating with the Peshwa for a seaport on the Malabar coast that would be handy for access not only to Poona but to Bombay. Orders were sent from Calcutta to Bombay to make certain demands and remonstrances that were calculated to bring on a fresh rupture with the Poona ministry. The Bombay Presidency proposed a second expedition to reinstate Ragoba, who had this time made it absolutely clear to them that he only needed a military escort up to Poona, where he would be welcomed with acclamations; and Hastings, overruling Francis and Wheler, very imprudently sanctioned it. The news of war having actually broken out in 1778 between France and England confirmed and accentuated all the motives and reasons for attacking the Mahrattas. A force was despatched under Goddard from Bengal across the whole breadth of the Indian continent to act with the Bombay troops; a treaty was made with the ill-starred Ragoba, as feeble and plausible a pretender as ever ruined his party and disgraced his backers; and Hastings tried to detach from the Mahratta federation the powerful Bhonsla Rajah of Nagpore, known in Parliamentary reports as the Bouncello. But the Bombay government, anxious to be first in the field and to monopolise the triumph, pushed

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their troops forward on Poona without waiting for the Bengal contingent, and very soon plunged into a morass of troubles. Ragoba’s promises and prospects proved equally illusory11; the civil and military officers quarrelled, the army was harassed, brought to a standstill, and the invasion was, in short, ignominiously repulsed. When Goddard arrived and took command he restored the credit of our arms; but the war went on until in 1782 it was terminated, after immense expenditure, by a disadvantageous treaty that in no way raised our reputation with the Mahrattas, or diminished their power to annoy us.

It has seemed worth while to give some account of these questionable proceedings, because the Mahratta war may be taken to have been the fountainhead of the deep waters in which Hastings soon afterwards very nearly lost his footing. The Mahrattas soon proved themselves his superiors in Oriental diplomacy, and very awkward antagonists in war. They were a confederacy of notable military chiefs, who, while they were constantly quarrelling among themselves, and parleying with the English in order to alarm each other, in the end always combined to delude and resist the foreigner. They held in the centre of India a position which enabled them to threaten

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the three divided English Presidencies, to intrigue successfully against them at Mysore and Hyderabad, and in this way to lay pitfalls into which an incapable governor at Madras or Bombay was very liable to fall. Hastings, on the other hand, was bitterly opposed by Francis in his own Council; his authority was limited and ill supported at home; the two minor governments, jealous and incompetent, were too distant for effective control; with these odds against him he was no match for the Mahrattas in a perilous and intricate game of war and politics. He soon found himself overloaded with debt, thwarted and censured in India and England, entangled in hostilities with Hyder Ali as well as with the Mahrattas, and reduced by want of funds to such questionable expedients that his allies and dependents fared rather worse than his enemies. If Hastings had rightly estimated the condition of our affaire in Europe when the war broke out with France in 1778, he would have agreed quickly with his Indian adversaries, instead of striking harder against them; for with that rupture began a five years’ eclipse, the darkest in English history, of the national reputation for political and military capacity. Hastings, who unluckily took the tide of our fortunes at the ebb, was for the time left stranded in India and deserted at home. He saw at once the imminent danger to which all our possessions on the west coast would be exposed if a French fleet, acting in concert with a Mahratta army, should appear off Bombay; but the emergency only stimulated his energetic temperament to a bolder and speedier stroke at the Mahrattas. “If it be really true,” he said in Council12,

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“that the British arms and influence have suffered so severe a check in the western world, it is more incumbent on those who are charged with the interests of Great Britain in the East, to exert themselves for the retrieval of the national loss”; and since the instructions from England had left him some latitude in regard to the war, he enlarged with much vigour the scale of operations. He soon discovered that his legitimate Indian resources could provide neither men nor money sufficient for bringing the Mahrattas to terms; he became entangled in the disastrous quarrel of the Madras government with Hyder Ali, nor did he finally extricate himself without some grave calamities and enormous expense. But there is no ground for Burke’s malevolent charge against him that his real purpose was to pursue unjust and impolitic schemes of conquest, and to use the pretext of French intervention to foster his own ambitions desire for aggrandisement, or that he was guilty of falsehood, fraud, and duplicity. It is certain that he believed the safety of our Indian possessions to be in imminent jeopardy, and that by the force of this conviction he was first impelled into a hazardous high-handed tone of policy, and next driven to unjustifiable financial measures for maintaining it. The dangers were indeed great and manifold enough to demand the most energetic measures; and to Hastings they seemed to be closing round his government with that stormy violence which threatens instant shipwreck, which sometimes compels a responsible chief to throw overboard ordinary scruples, and to use all and any means available for political self-preservation. In this situation his bold and adventurous tactics in front of numerous enemies lay him open to the charge of rashness, and

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some of his acts are morally inexcusable; yet no lower motive has ever been brought home to him than an unflinching determination to preserve at risks the immense national interests which he held in charge; nor can it be denied that under his command the loose incoherent fabric of the hall built British empire in India was mainly held together by his energy, and cemented by his ultimate success. The impending struggle was long and arduous; but in the end it cleared the ground decisively.

“I am morally certain,” wrote Hastings from India in 1779, “that the resources of this country, in the hands of a military people and in the disposition of a consistent and undivided form of government, are both capable of vast internal improvement, and of raising that power which possesses them to the dominion of all India (an event which I may not mention without adding that it is what I never wish to see); and I believe myself capable of improving them, and of applying them to the real and substantial benefit of my own country.”

This passage may be fairly taken as embodying the final purpose and far end which all this rough hewing of English war and enterprise inevitably tended to shape out The gift of political prescience comes from a clear apprehension of the import and logical sequence of events; and Hastings saw plainly, as Clive had seen before him, how easily the whole country might be brought to accept a strong and orderly government, and what ample elements of moral and material improvement were contained in its vast population. The thing was to be done by those who were not to be daunted by immediate difficulties, or deterred by the novelty of the adventure,

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by poverty of imagination, or inability to adapt themselves to unfamiliar circumstances. A story told by Francis is here so much in point that it is worth inserting. It was written in November 1779:

“I happened to sup with him (Hastings) not long ago, when the conversation turned upon Robinson Crusoe. . . . While the rest of the company were talking, Mr. Hastings seemed lost in a reverie, in which I little expected that Robinson Crusoe could be concerned. At last he gravely declared that he had often read the book with singular satisfaction, but that no passage in it had ever struck him so much as where the hero is said to have built a monstrous boat at a distance from the sea, without knowing by what means he was to convey it to the water. And, by Jove,’ said Hastings, the same thing has happened to myself a hundred times in my life. I have built the boat without any further consideration, and when difficulties and consequences have been urged against it, have been too ready to answer them by saying to myself: Let me finish the boat first, and then, I’ll warrant, I shall find some method to launch it.’ “

“This,” says Francis, “is the man’s political picture drawn by himself”; and he might have added that the monstrous boat which our political Crusoe was trying to launch, with scanty means and difficulties of every kind, was the British empire in India.

But in 1779 Hastings was like a man who, while he eagerly surveys a broad road stretching out across the plain before him, suddenly finds it crossed by a flooded river in a deep ravine at his feet. “All my political plans,” he wrote in another part of the letter just quoted, “have been blasted by the precipitate and miserable enterprise of the Presidency of Bombay”; and he had a long and exhausting struggle before he emerged again upon the firm ground in front of him. His duty,

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as he regarded it, was to maintain at all costs the English position in India at a time when the sinews of the nation were strained to their utmost endurance on sea and land in all parts of the world. If he had been well served by able and strong-headed military leaders like Clive, who had gone, or like Wellesley, who was soon to come, his policy might have triumphed and his reputation might have been unchallenged. Men of real genius have the secret of calling up congenial spirits, and a good leader is very rarely at a loss for his staff. But Hastings had no voice in the selection of his colleagues, while in Bombay and Madras, where the fighting went on, he had little to do with the choice or direction of his subordinates; in such a situation the resources of men and money at his disposal in India were inadequate for a protracted content, and many chances of failure were beyond his control. He was soon reduced to the predicament of a financier who has embarked upon some daring and extensive operations, who finds that his distant agents are mismanaging the business and squandering the capital, and who must yet either meet their bills or accept bankruptcy. There is always something picturesque and impressive about fighting battles and seizing provinces, though the battles may be lost and annexation be unjust, or even unprofitable; but nothing alleviates the blank unpopularity of a desperate fiscal campaign, of empty treasuries, forced loans, increased taxes, and an administration that is equally needy and unfortunate. It must always be remembered that although the long Governor-Generalship of Hastings intervened between two great periods of annexation, yet he himself never willingly added a district to the

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English territory in India, for Benares and Ghazipur were taken in spite of his remonstrances. He took no provinces and won no victories; he maintained unbroken peace in Ma own provinces while the Mahrattas were routing the Bombay troops, and Hyder Ali was devastating Madras; so that his strength was wasted and his reputation tarnished in the inglorious business of providing money for carrying on distant, calamitous, and unproductive wars.

Footnotes

8. Life of Francis, ii. 51.

9. “The government to me was then (1773 ?) an object out of all view and contemplation. The idea of its being by any possibility attainable never occurred to me till December, 1774, when Clavering informed me of his resolution to decline the succession himself.” – Memorandum by Francis, Life, ii. 48.

10. Pages 72, 73.

11. “We reflect with some concern on the difference between the expectations we were flattered with on our arrival at the top of the Ghats, and the actual state of affairs. We were given to hope that immediately on the appearance there of the standard of Ragoba, Holkar and many other chiefs of rank and respect would join him with a numerous body of horse. ... Instead of these respectable partisans, none but a few mercenaries have yet joined us, and Ragoba in a message yesterday gave us explicitly to understand that he had been deceived.” (Letter from the civil commissioners attached to the army, 7th January, 1779.)

12. June, 1778; the reference seems to be to Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga.

This collection transcribed by Chris Gage
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