CHAPTER IV.

The early life of Warren Hastings – His appointment to a writership in Bengal – Important posts assigned to him – His return to England – He proceeds to Madras as the second member of council – His appointment as president of Bengal – The first acts of his administration – Double government abolished – The treaty of Benarcs – The Rohilla war – Home proceedings – Financial difficulties – Clive put on his defence – His death by suicide – The regulating act.

When treating of the early exploits of Clive in Bengal, the name of Warren Hastings was repeatedly mentioned. At that period he was only pushing his way into notice; but as he is now about to occupy a foremost place, and become one of the most distinguished characters in the history of India, it will be necessary to introduce him more formally to the notice of the reader, by giving a brief account of his previous career.

The manor of Daylesford, in Worcestershire, had for centuries been in possession of the main branch of the family of Hastings. During the great civil war the actual possessor was a zealous cavalier, and suffered accordingly. After spending half his estate in the cause of Charles I., he was glad to secure his personal safety by compounding with the Commonwealth for the greater part of the remainder. Little was now left except the old family mansion, but as there were no means of keeping it up, it was sold to a London merchant. The connection of the family with Daylesford would thus have been entirely dissolved, had not the last proprietor, previous to the sale, presented his second son to the rectory of the parish. The living was of little value, and was more than consumed in lawsuits about tithes with the new lord of the manor. The rector was thus reduced to a state bordering on destitution. He had two sons, Howard and Pynaston. Howard obtained a place in the customs; Pynaston, when only sixteen, married the daughter of a small proprietor of the name of Warren. The issue of this marriage was a son, who was born in the beginning of December, 1732, and called, after the family name of his mother, Warren Hastings. She survived his birth only a few days. His father shortly afterwards entered into a second marriage with the daughter of a butcher, took orders, and sailed for the West Indies, where he died. Warren Hastings was thus thrown as an orphan on the care of his paternal grandfather, who kept him at the rectory, and, unable to make any better provision for his education, sent him to the village school. He is said to have taken kindly to his book; and though there was little in his appearance to distinguish him from his rustic schoolfellows, it appears that he had begun to cherish thoughts far beyond his years. Late in life, referring to this early period, he thus expressed himself to a friend, “To lie beside the margin of that stream (a small tributary of the Isis), and muse, was one of my most favourite recreations; and there, one bright summer’s day, when I was scarcely seven years old, I well remember that I first formed the determination to purchase back Daylesford. I was then literally dependent upon those whose condition scarcely raised them above the pressure of absolute want; yet, somehow or another, the child’s dream, as it did not appear unreasonable at the moment, so in after years it never faded away.”¹

When he was eight years of age, his uncle Howard took him to London, and resolved to give him a liberal education. With this view he was boarded at a school at Newington, where the teaching was good, but the fare was so scanty that he used to say it stinted his growth, and made his stature smaller than it would otherwise have been. At the age of ten he was removed to Westminster School, where he greatly distinguished himself; and in his fourteenth year stood first in the examination for the foundation, though he had many older competitors. He continued two years longer at the school, and was looking forward to a studentship at Christ Church, when the death of his uncle Howard entirely changed his prospects. By his uncle’s will, a Mr. Chiswick, a friend and distant relation, was appointed his guardian. He accepted the office, and thought he could not discharge it better than by procuring for his pupil an appointment as writer in the service of the East India Company. Great was the disappointment of Dr. Nichols, head-master of Westminster School, on learning that his favourite and most promising scholar was about to be taken from him. He was even generous enough to offer to bear the expense of his residence at Oxford; but a writership in India was, in those days, regarded as the highroad to fortune, and Warren Hastings, who had not forgotten his resolution to recover possession of the family estate, appears not to have been dissatisfied when his guardian proved inflexible. Accordingly, after spending a short time at a commercial academy, in acquiring a knowledge of arithmetic and book-keeping, he sailed for Bengal, and arrived in October, 1750, when he was within two months of completing his eighteenth year.

After remaining two years in the secretary’s office at Calcutta, Hastings was appointed to the factory of Cossimbazar, and had been employed for several years in the ordinary commercial business of the Company, when Surajah Dowlah suddenly stopped short on his expedition to Purneah, and turned south, to execute his threat of expelling the English from Bengal. Cossimbazar, situated in the immediate vicinity of Moorshedabad, first felt his vengeance.

It was instantly taken and pillaged, and the inmates, of whom Hastings was one, were made prisoners. The nabob meanwhile continued his march, and, owing to a series of wretched blunders, which have already been detailed, made an easy capture of Calcutta. The governor and other English refugees, who had sought an asylum at Fulta, near the mouth of the Hooghly, found an opportunity of opening a correspondence with Hastings, who was still detained as a prisoner at the capital, and were indebted to him for much valuable information. His position, however, was full of danger, and he did not deem himself safe till he made his escape from Moorshedabad, and joined his countrymen at Fulta. He had not been long here when Clive arrived from Madras at the head of the troops which, by the victory of Plassey, effected a complete revolution in the government of Bengal. Hastings served on this occasion, like many of the other civil servants of the Company, as a volunteer. In so doing he evinced both zeal and courage under rather trying circumstances. He had just before married the widow of a Captain Campbell, and was of course obliged to leave her behind at Fulta, while he exposed himself to the fatigues and dangers of a campaign, the success of which was regarded by many as very doubtful. The marriage, which took place in 1756, was dissolved by the death of Mrs. Hastings in 1759. She had borne him two children, a daughter and a son. The former died in infancy, but the son lived till he was about six years old, and then died in England, to which he had been sent for his education.

In August, 1758, Hastings, who had attracted the notice of Clive, was appointed to reside at Moorshedabad, as the agent of the Company. He continued to act in this capacity till 1761, and must have had ample opportunity to make his fortune, had he chosen to imitate the example of many who ranked higher in the service. It must be mentioned, to his honour, that he is nowhere named as a participator in the enormous sums obtained, or rather extorted, from the native government under the name of presents. On removing from Moorshedabad, he was rewarded for his services with the still higher appointment of a seat in the Bengal council. At this period, when the majority of his colleagues were blindly following their insatiable thirst for gain, under the most hypocritical pretences, and practising all sorts of oppression against the natives, Hastings was repeatedly the only other member of council who supported Governor Vansittart, and joined him in protesting against the abominable selfishness of their colleagues, and the ruin with which the interests of the Company were in consequence threatened.

Hastings returned to England in 1764. He had been thirteen years in the service of the Company, and must have been able, by honest means, to acquire some degree of wealth. The great bulk of it was left in Bengal, where the temptation of a high interest appears to have blinded him to the insufficiency of the security, and was ultimately lost. In the employment of the comparatively small portion which he brought home with him, he displayed great liberality, making a present of £1000 to a sister, and settling an annuity of £200 on an aunt. The latter he continued punctually to pay, though he was obliged to borrow money for the purpose after his losses in Bengal. These losses had made it absolutely necessary for him to resume his service with the Company. It was some time, however, before a suitable appointment could be obtained. Vansittart’s pusillanimous administration had greatly disappointed Lord Clive. They had previously been steady friends, but a breach was now made, and continued to widen till it produced a complete alienation. Vansittart in consequence adopted the politics of Sullivan, and Hastings, though he never displayed much of the spirit of a partizan, was understood to belong to the same party. So long, therefore, as Clive’s party had the ascendency at the India House, Hastings could hardly hope to be patronized. His friend Mr. Sykes, aware of this, believed that he would most effectually serve his interest by appealing to Clive’s generosity. He accordingly addressed a letter to him, dated Calcutta, 28th March, 1768, in which he observed, “Your lordship knows my regard for Mr. Hastings, and the intimacy which we have maintained for so many years. I have now brought his affairs nearly to a conclusion, and sorry I am to say, they turn out more to the credit of his moderation than knowledge of the world. He is almost literally worth nothing, and must return to India or want bread. I therefore make it my earnest request to your lordship, that even if you cannot consistently promote his reappointment to the Company’s service, you will at least not give any opposition thereto.” In answer to this appeal, Clive replied, “Mr. Hastings’ connection with Vansittart subjects him to many inconveniences. The opposition given the directors this year prevented my obtaining his return to Bengal in council. Indeed, he is so great a dupe to Vansittart’s politics, that I think it would be improper that he should go to Bengal in any station, and I am endeavouring to get him out to Madras, high in council there, in which I believe I shall succeed.” He did succeed; and Hastings, appointed the second member of council, and of course the next in succession to the chair, then occupied by Mr. Du Pré, set sail in the Duke of Grafton for Madras, in the spring of 1769.

Among the passengers in the Duke of Grafton, was a German family of the name of Imhoff, consisting of the husband, who called himself a baron, though he was only going out to Madras to follow his profession as a portrait painter—of the wife, who is said to have been a native of Archangel, and to have possessed both personal attractions and high accomplishments—and of two or more children. Hastings was now of the mature age of thirty-seven, and having been deprived by death both of his wife and the two children she had borne him, might have been supposed proof against any new attachment which he knew he could not lawfully gratify. It turned out otherwise. Before the voyage was completed, not only had Hastings and the baroness avowed a mutual attachment, but come to an understanding with the baron in regard to it. Money was his object, and he was not unwilling to gain it by the sale of his wife. A regular bargain was accordingly concluded. Imhoff was to apply for a divorce in some German court, where the marriage tie was most easily dissolved, and Hastings, when the lady should thus be set free, was not only to make her his wife, but to adopt her children. The baron, of course, was to be rewarded with a sum of money far larger in amount than he could ever have hoped to acquire by taking portraits. This transaction, utterly disgraceful to all the parties connected with it, was ultimately carried out. It was necessary, however, that a considerable period should elapse between the application for the divorce and the decree. How were the impatient lovers to endure this interval? Mr. Gleig vouches for the fact, that they conducted themselves with the utmost propriety, and never exceeded the limits of a pure platonism. The baron and baroness continued to live in Madras as man and wife, and Mr. Hastings had nothing but the pleasure of defraying the expenses of their establishment. The same plan was followed when, about a year after, he became president of Bengal. They removed thither along with him, and were maintained, as before, at his expense, till the decree of divorce permitted the baron to depart with a well-filled purse, the wages of dishonour, and the baroness, now become Mrs. Hastings, to hold her levees as the wife of the first Governor-general of India. The children also seem not to have been forgotten, for one of them is afterwards met with bearing the rank and title of Lieutenant-general Sir Charles Imhoff.

While a member of the council of Madras, Hastings suggested and carried out an important improvement in the mode of providing the investment. This gave him a new claim on his employers, and accordingly to him all eyes were turned, when the chair of the Bengal council was about to become vacant by the resignation of Mr. Cartier. A conviction had been gaining ground that the plan of the double government had failed, and that it would be necessary for the Company to stand forth ostensibly as dewan. Indeed, as early as 1769 the directors had suggested an important modification of the existing system. The Pergunnahs of Calcutta, as well as the districts of Burdwan, Midnapore, and Chittagong, which had been assigned for the maintenance of the Company’s troops, had long been under their own immediate management. In all these, the directors observe, the revenues “have been considerably augmented; and this increase gives us a sensible pleasure, because we perceive the number of inhabitants has increased at the same time, which we regard as a proof that they have found in those provinces a better security of their property and relief from oppressions.” The Company’s management having thus stood the test, the fair inference was that it might be advantageously extended to all other parts of the country. Abuses similar to those which had been corrected in the above districts, “are still severely felt through all the provinces of Bengal and Behar, where the numerous tribes of foujedars, aumils, sirdars, &c., practise all the various modes of oppression which have been in use so long as the Moorish government has subsisted.” It was absolutely necessary, therefore, to reduce “that immense number of idle sycophants, who, for their own emolument and that of their principals, are placed between the tenant and the public treasury, and of which every one gets his share of plunder, the whole mass of which must amount to an enormous sum.”

The mode in which the directors proposed to carry out this extensive plan of reform was as follows:—“We have resolved to establish a committee of some of our ablest servants for the management of the dewannee revenues, at Moorshedabad for the Bengal province, and at Patna for that of Behar.” These committees or councils were, subject however to the direction of the presidency, to have the control of all the business relating to the revenue, and were to be assisted by so many of the junior covenanted servants “as from time to time may be found necessary to be sent into the several provinces, to correct abuses and maintain the intended reformation.” The great object of the councils is thus explained. They are “first to inform themselves of the real state of the collections in every part; that is to say, what rents are at this time actually paid by the tenants, and what was paid formerly; what is the nature of the cultivation, and what the chief produce of each district, and whether in that respect there seems a prospect of improvement. They are next to inform themselves of the amount of the charges of collection for some years past, in as particular a manner as possible; and you are then to judge how many of the aumils and other officers, among whom those immense sums have been divided, may be spared. This saving, as far it can reasonably be carried, at the same time that it will be a profit to the Company in point of revenue, will likewise be a relief to the tenant; for it cannot be doubted but that these numerous instruments of power lay the inhabitants under contribution in various secret ways, over and above what appears on the face of the accounts.”

It was not meant, however, “by any violent and sudden reform to change the constitution, but to remove the evil by degrees.” A kind of double government was still to be kept up, and it is accordingly expressly enjoined that “Mahomed Reza Khan, or some other principal person of the country, must be appointed naib dewan for the Bengal province (that is the Company’s deputy), and all the business must be carried on through the naib, and under his seal and signing; and, in like manner, Shitab Roy, or some other principal person, at Patna, for the Behar provinces.” At the same time the duties of these naibs were to be almost entirely ministerial. They were to give their advice as to the measures necessary to be taken, but they were not to be permitted to make any appointments, nor to put their seals to any orders without previous sanction. All such appointments were to be made, and all such orders given were to proceed from the councils of revenue alone, and copies of them were “to be entered upon their diary, or a book apart, and to be transmitted regularly to England.” This reformed system was to have been introduced by the supervisors; but in 1770, when there was no room to doubt that they had perished in the Aurora, the Bengal council took the task upon themselves, and appointed the two councils of revenue.

Such were the extreme limits to which the directors carried their views of reform in 1769; but new light had since been thrown on the subject, and the conclusion at which they had arrived in 1771 was, that a total change of system was necessary, and that they ought to stand forth openly and immediately in their own name as dewan. In giving the above instructions with regard to the councils of revenue, they had said, “In this reformation you are to proceed with a moderate, steady, and persevering spirit of inquiry, looking rather to the prevention of frauds for the future than the punishment of those offences which have already passed, and which, if not justified, are at least much palliated, by the immemorial custom of the Moorish government.” They were now animated by a different spirit. Their financial difficulties were thickening around them; the fearful famine, which has already been described, had left Bengal a perfect wreck, and horrid tales of oppression had been brought to them both from public and private sources. It was necessary, therefore, that some one able and willing to carry out their designs resolutely should forthwith be placed at the head of the Bengal government. Hastings was evidently the proper man. Clive alone could have successfully opposed his appointment; but as Vansittart was now for ever removed from the field, the high opinion which he early entertained of Hastings appears to have overborne all other considerations, and he gave him his strongest support. Accordingly, in April, 1771, Hastings was appointed second member of council at Calcutta, with succession as president and governor of Bengal. Though thus appointed in form only to the second place, it was perfectly understood that the first was awaiting him. He reached Calcutta on the 17th February, 1772, and, on the 13th of April following, when Mr. Cartier resigned, assumed actual charge of the government.

The appointment, though it could not but flatter him, did not blind him to the difficulties which he would have to encounter. The nature of these difficulties will be best explained by two letters which had been despatched from England in August, 1771, but only reached him ten days after he had taken possession of the chair. One of the letters was from Clive, who, after congratulating him on his removal to Bengal, and explaining the kind of government which he had recommended to the directors, continued thus, “The situation of affairs requires that you should be very circumspect and active. You are appointed governor at a very critical time, when things are suspected to be almost at the worst, and when a general misapprehension prevails of the mismanagement of the Company’s affairs. The last parliamentary inquiry has thrown the whole state of India before the public, and every man sees clearly that, as matters are now conducted abroad, the Company will not be long able to pay the £400,000 to government. The late dreadful famine, or a war either with Sujah Dowlah or the Mahrattas, will plunge us into still deeper distress. A discontented nation and disappointed minister will then call to account a weak and pusillanimous court of directors, who will turn the blow from themselves upon their agents abroad, and the consequences must be ruinous both to the Company and the servants. In this situation, you see the necessity of exerting yourself in time, provided the directors give you proper powers, without which, I confess, you can do nothing; for self-interest or ignorance will obstruct every plan you can form for the public.” After a little self-laudation, in which he says, “I wish your government to be attended, as mine was, with success to the Company, and with the consciousness of having discharged every duty with firmness and fidelity,” Clive continues thus, “Be impartial and just to the public, regardless of the interest of individuals, where the honour of the nation and the real advantage of the Company are at stake, and resolute in carrying into execution your determination, which, I hope, will at all times be rather founded upon your own opinion than that of others.”

Clive, whose self-reliance never failed him in the greatest emergency, was ready to suspect a want of it in most other men. He was certainly in error when he singled out this want as if it were the besetting sin of Hastings, whose tenacity of purpose was little, if at all, inferior to his own. The whole passage is, notwithstanding, well worthy of quotation—“From the little knowledge I have of you, I am convinced that you have not only abilities and personal resolution, but integrity and moderation with regard to riches; but I thought I discovered in you a diffidence in your own judgment, and too great an easiness of disposition, which may subject you insensibly to be led where you ought to guide. Another evil which may arise from it is, that you may pay too great an attention to the reports of the natives, and be inclined to look upon things in the worst instead of the best light. A proper confidence in yourself, and never-failing hope of success, will be a bar to this and every other ill that your situation is liable to; and as I am sure that you are not wanting in abilities for the great office of governor, I must add that an opportunity is now given you of making yourself one of the most distinguished characters of this country.”

The above letter, while candidly setting forth the difficulties of his new position, was full of encouragement, and must have been extremely gratifying to Hastings. The other letter was from the directors, and furnished a first specimen of the disagreeable duties which they expected him to perform. Mahomed Reza Khan, it will be remembered, had been appointed to the joint office of naib dewan and naib nazim, the former giving him complete control in the collection of the revenues for the behoof of the Company, and the latter enabling him to wield the whole executive authority in the name of the nabob. He had thus enjoyed the sovereignty of the province for about seven years, and in addition to an annual stipend of nine lacs of rupees (£90,000) paid to himself, had the uncontrolled disposal of the thirty-two lacs (£320,000) intrusted to him for the use of the nabob. Great as was the power and influence which were thus concentrated in his hands, his character stood high, and the general belief was that he had displayed equal ability and fidelity in discharging the duties of his important trusts. Rumours to the contrary, however, began to be circulated, and when the revenues began to fall short of what had been too sanguinely anticipated, the council of Behar, glad of any means of exculpating themselves, did not scruple to insinuate that Mahomed Reza Khan’s management was in fault. Without venturing to bring a specific charge, they pointed out a number of sources from which it was supposed that corruption might arise and be practised with impunity, and concluded their letter to the directors, dated 30th September, 1769, in the following terms—“Power without control, knowledge without participation, and influence without any effectual counteraction, was a state of things too important and replete with consequences to be vested in any three ministers, or rather one single man, who, allowing him the clearest preference for integrity, ability, and attachment among his countrymen, could not be supposed superior to temptation, and at least ought not to be trusted so extensively and independently as has been necessarily the consequence of the present system.”

While the council were thus pouring their suspicions into the ears of the directors, direct charges of mismanagement and corruption were made against Mahomed Reza Khan from suspicious quarters. Native jealousy and malignity had found access to the inmost recesses of Leadenhall Street, and agents in their employ were constantly insinuating that an inquiry into the management of the naib, in his double capacity of dewan and nazim, would disclose frightful scenes of iniquity and oppression. The Hindoo Nuncomar was well understood to be the prime mover in bringing forward these charges; and the directors, thoroughly acquainted as they were with his despicable character, ought to have refused to give any heed to him. Instead of this they considered his assertions, coupled with the above insinuations of the Bengal council, a presumptive evidence of guilt. Accordingly, in their general letter, dated 28th August, 1771—after alluding to the recent famine, and expressing “the greatest indignation on finding a charge exhibited against any persons whatever (but especially natives of England) for monopolizing grain, and thereby aggravating the woes, and no doubt increasing the number of wretched mortals, labouring under the most awful circumstances which could possibly happen to any people whatsoever”—they continued thus: “As we have further reasons to suspect that large sums have, by violent and oppressive means, been actually collected by Mahomed Reza Khan, on account of the dewannee revenues, great part of which he has appropriated to his own use, or distributed amongst the creatures of his power and the instruments of his oppressions, we should not think ourselves justified to the Company or the public were we to leave him in future the management of the dewannee collections; and as transferring the like trust to any other minister could yield us little prospect of reaping any benefit from the change, we are necessitated to seek by other means the full advantage we have to expect from the dewannee. It is therefore our determination to stand forth as dewan, and, by the agency of the Company’s servants, to take upon ourselves the entire care and management of the revenues. In confidence, therefore, of your abilities to plan and execute this important work, we hereby authorize and require you to divest Mahomed Reza Khan, and every person employed by or in conjunction with him, or acting under his influence, of any charge or direction in the business of the collections.” Assuming that his guilt was as great as the directors suspected it to be, a simple dismissal did not at all meet the justice of the case, and they accordingly add, “We deem insufficient the depriving him of a station which may be made subservient to the most corrupt purposes. It is therefore our pleasure and command, that you enter into a minute investigation, not only of the causes to which the decrease of revenue may be ascribed, but also into Mahomed Reza Khan’s general conduct during the time the dewannee revenues have been under his charge; and as the several complaints and accusations already noticed to you are of a nature too serious to be suffered to pass over without the most rigid inquiry, we have directed our president to order him to repair to Calcutta, there to answer the facts which shall be alleged against him, both in respect to his public administration and private conduct.”

The direction referred to was contained in a separate letter, addressed to Hastings alone, by the secret committee of directors. It was more peremptory than the above account of it indicates. After referring him to the above general letter for an account “of the reasons we have to be dissatisfied with the administration of Mahomed Reza Khan,” and for “divesting him of the rank and influence he holds as naib dewan of the kingdom of Bengal,” it enjoins him to “issue positive orders for securing the person of Mahomed Reza Khan, together with his whole family and his known partizans and adherents,” and bring them under arrest to Calcutta. This letter reached Hastings on the 24th of April, 1772, only ten days after his instalment as president. The very next morning a messenger was on the way with instructions to Mr. Middleton to take immediate steps for carrying these orders into effect. It was feared that the sudden arrest of a person so powerful and so much respected might not have been effected without tumult; but Mahomed Reza Khan, on being made acquainted with the nature of Mr. Middleton’s instructions, yielded with the utmost dignity and composure, and commenced his journey to Calcutta under a sufficient guard. These proceedings, and the authority for adopting them, were made known by Mr. Hastings to the council for the first time on the 28th of April, and immediately became the subject of deliberation. It was at once admitted that they could not receive their naib dewan “with the usual honours;” but it was moved that, in respect of his rank and station, a member of council should be sent forward to wait upon him, and give a verbal explanation of the articles laid to his charge. This motion, though objected to by Hastings and three other members as incongruous, was adopted; and Mr. Graham, deputed for the purpose, met Mahomed Reza Khan at Chitpore. On hearing the nature of the charges, he merely expressed his eager desire that no time should be lost in deciding upon them. As the charges brought against the naib dewan of Bengal seemed to apply equally to the naib dewan of Behar, Shitab Roy, who held that office, was subjected to similar treatment, and sent down to Calcutta on the 7th of May.

In the letter of the secret committee Hastings received a curious recommendation as to the kind of evidence by which he might be able to establish the delinquency of Mahomed Reza Khan. “Your own judgment,” they say, “will direct you to all such means of information as may be likely to bring to light the most secret of his transactions. We cannot, however, forbear recommending to you to avail yourself of the intelligence which Nuncomar may be able to give respecting the naib’s administration; and, while the envy which Nuncomar is supposed to bear this minister may prompt him to a ready communication of all proceedings which have come to his knowledge, we are persuaded that no scrutable part of the naib’s conduct can have escaped the watchful eye of his jealous and penetrating rival.” The iniquity of a judge (for in this capacity the Company were ostensibly acting) in thus endeavouring to obtain the conviction of the party accused by suborning his most inveterate enemy, appears not to have occurred to the directors, and was so far from producing any scruple in the mind of Hastings, that he improved upon the suggestion, and, not contented with employing him, actually bribed him to give evidence.

The moment Mahomed Reza Khan was arrested, it was well understood that the high offices which he held were abolished, and would never be revived. Several important appointments were in consequence rendered necessary, and among them that of dewan, or superintendent of the nabob’s household. At the meeting of council on the 11th of July, 1772, it was proposed that this office should be conferred on Rajah Goordass, the son of Maharajah Nuncomar. Several of the members, holding that this was equivalent to the appointment of Nuncomar himself, recoiled from the very idea, and enumerated villainies sufficient to prove how utterly unfit he was to be trusted. In 1761, in consequence of false and injurious allegations which he had made, he was confined a prisoner to his house as a dangerous character; in 1762 he assisted the Shazada in carrying on a correspondence with the French governor of Pondicherry; at a later date he was proved to have forged letters for the purpose of ruining a native, named Ram Churn, who had acted as banyan to Lord Clive, General Calliaud, and Mr. Vansittart; in 1764 he was found to have been in treaty to furnish Meer Cossim with full accounts of all the movements of the English army, on condition of being appointed to the dewannee of Bengal; in 1765 Mr. Vansittart had reported his treasonable correspondence; and finally, the directors themselves had recorded their opinion of him in the following terms: “In short, it appears he is of that wicked and turbulent disposition that no harmony can subsist in society where he has the opportunity of interfering. We therefore most readily concur with you that Nuncomar is a person improper to be trusted with his liberty in our settlements, and capable of doing mischief if he is permitted to go out of the province, either to the northward or to the Deccan.” To these charges Hastings has no answer except that with which the directors had previously furnished him. “The inveterate and rooted enmity which has long subsisted between Mahomed Reza Khan and Nuncomar, and the necessity of employing the vigilance and activity of so penetrating a rival to counteract the designs of Mahomed Reza Khan, and to eradicate that influence which he still retains in the government of this province, and more especially in the family of the nabob, are the sole motives of this recommendation of Rajah Goordass.” On these grounds alone his appointment was carried.

On the same day another important place in the nabob’s establishment was filled up. He was still a minor, and behoved to have a guardian. Ahteramul-Dowlah, the brother of the late Meer Jaffier, and consequently paternal uncle of the young nabob, had probably the best legal title; but there were good reasons for setting him aside. He was the father of a large family, and might have been tempted to make way for one of his own sons by the death of his pupil. As the office was only to be of temporary duration, and it was not desired to give much eclat to it, a female was preferred. The nabob’s own mother was said to be still alive, and it is not easy to understand why she was overlooked or postponed to another surviving widow of Meer Jaffier, known by the name of the Munny Begum. She had originally been a dancing girl, and cannot, therefore, be supposed to have been peculiarly qualified. She had, however, one qualification, which seems at this time to have been paramount in the opinion of Hastings—she was “the declared enemy of Mahomed Reza Khan.” He gives a still more forcible reason when he adds—“The truth is, that the affairs of the Company stand at present on a footing which can neither last as it is, nor be maintained on the rigid principles of private justice; you must establish your own power, or you must hold it dependent on a superior, which I deem to be impossible. The Begum, as a woman, is incapable of passing the bounds assigned to her. Her ambition cannot aspire to higher dignity. She has no children to provide for or mislead her fidelity. Her actual authority rests on the nabob’s life, and therefore cannot endanger it: it must cease with his minority, when she must depend absolutely on the Company for support against her ward and pupil, who will then become her master.” These reasons are certainly far stronger than the declared enmity to Mahomed Reza Khan, which ought never to have been mentioned along with them; and they ought, we think, to have saved Hastings from much of the clamour which was raised and the calumny which was uttered against him in consequence of having recommended this appointment. The objections to it, which would have been unanswerable had it been intended that the nabob, on attaining majority, should actually administer the executive power of the government, cease to have any weight as soon as it is understood that he was henceforth to disappear entirely from public life, and that the Company had fully resolved to take the whole conduct of government into their own hands, and so accustom the natives to the visible exercise of British sovereignty.

When the directors adopted this resolution, and began to take steps to carry it into effect, they seem to have had a very imperfect idea of the extent of the revolution it implied. Mahomed Reza Khan concentrated in himself, as we have seen, the whole administrative and executive power of the government; and consequently, the moment he was arrested and sent off to Calcutta, the whole machinery of government in Bengal was suddenly stopped. Some attempt, indeed, was made to meet the emergency, in the revenue department, by ordering Mr. Middleton to take charge of the office of dewan, until a proper plan should be digested by the council. It is also true that in the formation of such a plan some progress had been made under the new revenue arrangements suggested by the directors in 1769. The council of revenue had, in terms of these arrangements, stationed servants of the Company in the different districts of the country, for the purpose of superintending the native officers, and suppressing any manifest abuses which might fall under their notice. They were also instructed to obtain information in regard to a number of important heads, which were specified; and they had accordingly furnished a series of reports tending to throw light on the state of the country, and thereby facilitate the task which the governor and council were about to undertake. The general tone of these reports, however, was far from encouraging. Indeed, society seemed to be fast retrograding to a state of barbarism. The nazims exacted what they could from the zemindars and great farmers of the revenue; these in their turn plundered those immediately below them; and the work of extortion continued to descend by successive steps, till it fell with accumulated weight on the ryots, or actual cultivators, who were thus kept in a state bordering on beggary, unless when they were able to cheat the revenue by making false returns, and bribing the connivance of government officials.

The administration of justice was still more defective than that of the revenue department. With regard to it the report of the superintendents or supervisors was, that “the regular course was everywhere suspended; but every man exercised it who had the power of compelling others to submit to his decisions.” At this time the Company had been seven years in possession of the dewannee, and it is certainly most discreditable to them and their officials, that during so long an interval so little had been done to protect the weak against the strong, and put down the most clamant injustice. It was now determined, however, manfully to grapple with difficulties; and the only danger was, lest in making up for past delays there might be an undue anxiety for despatch. On the 16th of April, only three days after Hastings began to preside in the council, the subject was formally brought forward, and it was resolved, that the simplest, cheapest, and most effectual mode of raising the revenue, was to let the lands in future on leases of considerable duration. On the 14th of May the plan was completely chalked out. The lands were to be let for a period of five years. For this purpose a committee of council, consisting of the president and four members, were to make a circuit throughout the country: the covenanted servants, who, since 1769, had superintended the collections in the several districts, under the name of supervisors, were henceforth to be called collectors; and with the collection of each district a native was to be associated, with the title of dewan. No banyan or servant of a collector was to be permitted to farm any portion of the revenue. All modes of extortion, particularly by so-called presents from ryots to middlemen, from middlemen to zemindars, and zemindars to collectors, were to be carefully prevented. Extravagant rates of interest, by which the ryots were held in bondage, were, if possible, to be reduced, and as a means conducive to this end, collectors and their servants were forbidden to lend to middlemen, and middlemen to lend to ryots.

All these precautions indicate a sincere desire on the part of the council to give protection in the quarter where it was most needed.

BANYAN.¹—From Solvyn, Les Hindous.

required; and additional security was taken against the oppression of the ryots, by granting them new pottahs or leases, in which the full amount of their obligations was distinctly specified, and making it penal for any zenindar or middleman to exact a single farthing beyond it. It may be questioned, however, whether the council were yet in possession of the facts necessary to enable them to carry out a complete revenue system, and whether the system actually adopted had been duly considered. The time, too, was not well chosen. The whole country had just been ravaged by a dreadful famine, and yet so effectually had the screw been applied by those employed in the collection of the revenue, that its amount in the following year (1771) exceeded that which had been raised in the year before the famine commenced. It is perfectly obvious that this result could not have been obtained by taking a fair share of the actual produce. Some violent process must have been employed. Its nature is thus explained by Auber:²—“There was one tax which the council described as accounting for the equality preserved in the past collections. It was called najahly, or an assessment upon the actual inhabitants of every inferior division of the lands, to make up for the loss sustained in the rents of their neighbours, who were either dead or had fled the country. This tax, equally impolitic and oppressive, had been authorized by the ancient and general usage of the country. It had not the sanction of government, but took place as a matter of course. In ordinary cases, and while the lands were in a state of cultivation, it was scarcely felt, and never, or rarely complained of. However irreconcilable with strict justice, it afforded a reparation to the state for occasional deficiencies; it was a kind of security against desertion, by making the inhabitants mutually responsible for each other; and precluded the inferior collector from availing himself of the pretext of waste or deserted lands to withhold any part of his collections. But the same practice, which under different circumstances might have been beneficial, became, under the affliction of famine, an intolerable burden, and fell with peculiar severity on those villages which had suffered the greatest depopulation. It also afforded opportunity to the farmers and others to levy under colour of it contributions on the people, and even to increase it to whatever magnitude they pleased, being themselves the judges of the loss sustained, and of the proportion which the inhabitants were to pay to replace it. It was thus, when the inhabitants were only recovering from a famine, the evils of which must have been greatly aggravated by a ruthless tax, imposed in opposition to all our ordinary ideas of humanity and justice, that the committee of circuit set out to make a new settlement of the lands of the country. The scenes of desolation which must have met them on every side might have produced some misgivings as to the appropriateness of the time they had chosen, and they had soon sufficient proof that their proposals would not be voluntarily accepted by the great body of those to whom they were more immediately directed. On arriving at Kishnagur, sixty-four miles north of Calcutta, they commenced operations by intimating their readiness to receive offers for new leases; but these came in so slowly, and were so much beneath the previous valuations which had been made, that it became necessary either to abandon the plan altogether, or to adopt some means of quickening the process, by which effect might be given to it. It was therefore resolved, that instead of receiving offers from the former renters, the lands should be let by auction to the highest bidder. This was a fearful innovation, fraught with hardship and misery, of which it is charitable to believe that the committee of circuit had only a dim conception. Hosts of adventurers immediately appeared, and entered into competition with the old zemindars, in whose families the collection of revenue, and either fixed salaries or a percentage on the amount collected, had long been hereditary. There was no longer any ground to complain of the amount of the offers. Many of the old renters, naturally anxious to retain a position which carried both emolument and dignity with it, were determined not to be ousted, even though they should offer far more than they would be able to pay, and thus laid a burden on their shoulders under which they must ultimately sink. The new men were still less scrupulous. With them the whole transaction was a greedy speculation. If they could manage to extract any profit from it, good and well; if not, they had only to dissolve the bargain by a sudden disappearance. Though some precaution was used in favour of previous possessors, and pensions were even granted to many of those who were dispossessed, from not having made what was deemed a reasonable offer, the changes produced by this system of rack-renting are said to have amounted to a social revolution.

It has been already observed, that “the regular course of justice” was everywhere suspended. Against this state of anarchy it was necessary to provide. The means employed were as follows:—In each district two courts were erected—a civil and a criminal. The civil court, styled mofussul dewannee adawlut, was presided over by the collector, assisted by the provincial dewan; the criminal court, styled foujedarry adawlut, was also presided over by the collector, not so much, however, as actual judge, as to overlook the proceedings, and see that they were regularly and impartially conducted. The officers by whom the business was actually conducted were the cazi and mufti of the district, and two moulavies, or expounders of the law. At Calcutta, two supreme courts were established for the review of the proceedings of the provincial courts by appeal. The supreme civil court, styled dewannee sudder adawlut, was presided over by the president, with two members of council, assisted by the dewan of the khalsa, or chief revenue officer, and some other native judges. The supreme criminal court, styled nizamut sudder adawlut, consisted of a presiding judge, designated daroga-i-adawlut, the chief cazi, the chief mufti, and three moulavies. The presiding judge was nominated by the president and council, and was understood to occupy the place of the original nazim. All capital cases were reviewed by his court, but not ultimately disposed of till they had been referred to the Bengal council. At a later period, however, this reference was dispensed with, and the court itself, removed to Moorshedabad, was restored to the nabob as part of the nizamut. For Calcutta itself and its Pergunnahs, two courts similar to those of the other districts were established, and presided over by the members of council in rotation. In all these courts the proceedings were conducted in accordance with the forms in use before the British supremacy was established.

In a letter addressed to the directors in September, 1772, Hastings gave a full account of his proceedings. The extent of business which it was necessary to despatch is thus described:—“I beg leave to call to your recollection, that by a strange concurrence of unforeseen causes, your administration had at this time every object that could engage the care of government (war only excepted), all demanding their instant attention. The settlement of the revenue of Bengal—the dismissal of the naib dewan and naib soubah of the provinces—the inquiry into his conduct for a course of years preceding—the dismissal of the naib dewan of Behar, and inquiry into his conduct—the establishment of the dewannee on the plan directed by the honourable Company—the arrangement of the nabob’s household—the reduction of his allowance and expenses—the establishment of a regular administration of justice throughout the provinces—the inspection and reformation of the public offices—and, independent of all these, the ordinary duties of the presidency, which, from the amazing growth of your affairs, were of themselves sufficient to occupy the whole time and application which we could bestow upon them, and even more than we could bestow, from the want of a regular system, the natural consequence of the rapidity with which these affairs have accumulated.” He then states that, in arranging the above business, “the settlement of the revenues,” as “the first in consequence,” claimed immediate attention. “It was late in the season. The lands had suffered unheard-of depopulation by the famine and mortality of 1769. The collections, violently kept up to their former standard, had added to the distress of the country, and threatened a general decay of the revenue, unless immediate remedies were applied to prevent it. The farming system—for a course of years subjected to proper checks and regulations—seemed the most likely to afford relief to the country, and both to ascertain and produce the real value of the lands, without violence to the ryots.” After referring to the appointments in the nabob’s household, the letter concludes with a kind of apology for the delay which had taken place in investigating the charges against Mahomed Reza Khan and Shitab Roy.

The answer of the court, dated 16th April, 1773, was most complimentary:—“The whole of your conduct seems fully to have justified the choice of the secret committee, who intrusted to your management the execution of a plan of the utmost importance. Although you will observe that sundry changes have lately taken place in the direction of the Company’s affairs at home, those changes will not in the least affect the measures in which you are engaged; on the contrary, we take this early opportunity, not only of testifying our entire approbation of your conduct, but of assuring you of our firmest support in accomplishing the work you have so successfully commenced; and we doubt not but it will issue in the deliverance of Bengal from oppression, in the establishment of our credit, influence, and interest in India, and consequently, in every advantage which the Company or the nation may justly expect from so important a transaction.” All the other parts of the letter are in the same strain. “Your attention to the settlement of the revenues, as a primary object, has our entire approbation; and it is with the utmost satisfaction we observe that the farming system will be generally adopted.” Again, “Your choice of the Begum for guardian to the nabob we entirely approve. The use you intend making of Nuncomar is very proper; and it affords us great satisfaction to find that you could at once determine to suppress all personal resentment, when the public welfare seemed to clash with your private sentiments relative to him.” To show that these flattering testimonials were intended not for the council in general, but for the president individually, he is told in conclusion, “Notwithstanding this letter is signed by us (the court of directors), we mean it as secret, and transmit it confidentially to you only; and we leave it to your discretion to lay the contents, or any part thereof, before the council, if circumstances should, in your opinion, render it necessary, or if you should judge it for our interest so to do, and not otherwise.”

The charges against Shitab Roy and Mahomed Reza Khan were now investigated. Against the former there was not even the shadow of proof of embezzlement or mismanagement during the period of his administration, and after more than a year’s detention at Calcutta, the council not only pronounced him honourably acquitted, but sent him back to Behar, to act as roy-royan, the highest appointment in the revenue which remained since his previous office had been abolished, and to preside as naib nizam over the administration of criminal justice. His spirit was too deeply wounded to allow him to find any compensation in these appointments for the odious accusations to which he had been so unworthily subjected. His health had given way before he left Calcutta, and in about a month after he was in his grave. As the only return that could now be made, his new appointments, fiscal and judicial, were at once conferred upon his son, Kallian Sing, “from an entire conviction of the merits and faithful services, and in consideration of the late sufferings of his deceased father.”

The case of Mahomed Reza Khan was not so quickly disposed of. The inquiry was not to be confined to the period when he held the nizamut, but to be carried back to an earlier time, when he collected the revenues of Dacca; and so numerous and confident were the charges of his accusers, that the directors not only believed his conviction certain, but were buoyed up with the idea of giving some relief to their finances from the large balances which he would be obliged to pay into their treasury. Hastings was very unwilling to disappoint their expectations. One blunder with regard to the Dacca charge had early been discovered. The name of Mahomed Reza Khan had been erroneously substituted for that of his predecessor, Mahomed Ali Khan, and he had in consequence been charged, during the two years he held the collectorate, with an annual payment of thirty-eight lacs instead of twenty-seven lacs, the sum for which he had actually agreed. A sum of eleven lacs per annum, or of twenty-two lacs for the two years, was thus at once cut off from the balance supposed to be due by him. Still, in communicating this fact to the directors, the council added, “We have great reason to believe that on a strict scrutiny there will appear a balance against him of seventeen lacs” (£170,000). This balance, too, was ultimately found to be a myth, and the Dacca charge proved utterly groundless. A similar conclusion with regard to the charge of monopolizing grain for profit during the famine having been arrived at, the council resolved, fourteen months after Mahomed Reza Khan’s arrest, to remove the guard which had been placed over him, on his engaging not to depart from Calcutta till the inquiry was completed. After another interval the council became satisfied that he was entitled to a general acquittal; but by a gross dereliction of the duty assigned to them, declined to pronounce it till they should obtain the sanction of the directors.

In the whole of these proceedings the council were evidently impressed with a belief that a conviction was expected from them; and accordingly, on the termination of the inquiry, in March, 1774, Hastings, in announcing the result to the directors, seemed to think it necessary to make a long apology for having done a simple act of justice:—“Notwithstanding the consciousness which I possess of my own integrity, and the certainty that my conduct throughout this ungrateful business will do me credit, yet I am not without my fears; I am aware of the violent prejudices which were taken up at once against Mahomed Reza Khan, by all ranks of people, both here and at home. I am also aware that in England, where the very name of inquiry into the past management of affairs in India flatters the passion of the times, and raises expectations of great and important detections, the result may balk those expectations, and turn the torrent of clamour another way. In many of the private letters which I received from England I was warned to act with great caution in this inquiry, as the confirmation of my credit with the public, and (forgive me for adding) with your honourable court, depended upon it. The magnitude of the charges which were alleged against Mahomed Reza Khan, his reputed wealth, the means which that afforded him both of suppressing evidence and even of influencing his judges in his favour, and the natural conclusion deducible from so many exaggerated accusations, that some part of them at least was true, gave additional force to these cautionary intimations, and made me fear for the consequences, not only as they might affect my reputation, which it has been the study of my life to maintain unblemished, but as they might blast all my hopes from the continuation of your favour, which I hold solely on the credit of my integrity.

In the same letter Hastings furnished some strong specimens of Nuncomar’s duplicity. “Before my departure from Fort St. George, when my appointment to this presidency was known, a messenger, expressly deputed from Munny Begum, came to me there with letters from her entreating my protection, in the most earnest terms, against Mahomed Reza Khan, and referring for further information to Maharajah Nuncomar, from whom I received similar addresses on the same subject, and by the same hand. The Munny Begum has since solemnly disavowed having written such letters, or authorized such a communication. A short time after the elevation of his son as dewan to the nabob, Nuncomar sent draughts of letters to the Begum, which he recommended her to write to me, enumerating the many encroachments which had been made by the English government on the rights of the nizamut, and reclaiming them on behalf of the nabob. I trust to his own genius to furnish you with newer proofs in the representations which he has already made, or which he may at this time convey to your knowledge.” The directors, in their answer, approved of all that had been done respecting Mahomed Reza Khan and Shitab Roy, but added, in their own vindication, that “the general and alarming accounts of the oppressions rendered a scrutiny into their conduct indispensable. The governor and council had expressed a belief that the inquiry would issue in proving a large balance to be due; the court, therefore, felt authorized to conclude, that there must have been such public and general appearances of mal-administration as warranted the course they had adopted.” Their conclusion is rather singular:—“As we wish Mahomed Reza Khan to remain under no obligations than those of gratitude, we do not object to his total enlargement.” It is rather ludicrous to talk of gratitude as being due to those who had not only not conferred any obligation, but committed a gross injustice. Hastings spoke more reasonably in his letter, when he hinted at reparation, though he deemed it expedient to add, “Whatever your resolution may be concerning the future fate of Mahomed Reza Khan, it is my duty (although I believe it unnecessary) to represent that whatever reparation you may think due for his past sufferings, the restoration of any part of the power which he possessed will inevitably tend to the injury of the Company’s affairs, and the diminution of your influence and authority. There can be but one government and one power in the province. Even the pretensions of the nabob may prove a source of embarrassment, when he is of age to claim his release from the present state of pupilage which prevents his asserting them.”

Before the above proceedings were closed, Hastings and his council had become involved in transactions of a very questionable character. We have seen Shah Alum escorted to his capital and seated on his throne by the Mahrattas. Their object, of course, was only to use him as a tool; and he soon found that while he was dreaming of reviving in his own person the splendour of the Mogul dynasty, he had only made himself the slave of very imperious masters. By an agreement which he had made with them he was to have an equal share in all conquests, and on the faith of it he had assisted them in their wars with the Rohillas; but when he claimed his share they only laughed him to scorn, and made him aware that his business in future would be to lend them the authority of his name, and grant them new sunnuds as often as they were pleased to demand them. Incensed above measure, he took advantage of a quarrel among the Mahratta confederates, and even ventured to take the field against them; but, instead of freeing himself from their galling yoke, he sustained a defeat which rivetted it more closely, and left him entirely at their mercy. Among other exactions, he was obliged to make a formal cession to them of the districts of Allahabad and Corah. These, it will be remembered, had been wrested from the Nabob of Oude during the disastrous war which he waged with the Company, and were assigned to the emperor at the time when he made the grant of the dewannee of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, under the express reservation of the annual payment of twenty-six lacs of rupees out of the revenues. The cession of these districts to the Mahrattas was naturally objected to by the Bengal presidency, and their opposition to it was strongly confirmed and fully justified, when, in a communication from Shah Alum himself, they learned that they had been ceded under compulsion, and were requested to take possession of them in his name, and hold them for his behoof. Sir Robert Barker, the British commander-in-chief, was accordingly ordered to include the two districts within the line of his defensive operations.

In thus stepping beyond what had long been recognized as the proper frontier of the Company’s territory, the troops could scarcely be said to have made an aggressive movement. The districts which they occupied they held only in trust, and when the proper owner should appear they would be ready to yield them up. Such at least were the grounds at first ostensibly taken up; but there is too much reason to suspect that they were not the real grounds, but only pretexts, under cover of which they meant to alienate the districts entirely from the emperor, and re-annex them to Oude, for a large pecuniary consideration. This was not honest, and yet it was not so glaringly iniquitous as another act of spoliation which the Company had long been meditating. As early as 1768, the directors, referring to the desire of the emperor to set out for Delhi, wrote as follows:—“If he flings himself into the hands of the Mahrattas, or any other power, we are disengaged from him, and it may be a fair opportunity of withholding the twenty-six lacs we now pay him.” Two years after, when urging the Bengal council to advise the emperor to take up his residence within the British territory, on the ground that his personal safety would thereby be best secured, they say, “To this plea must be added the ill effects of the continual drains of the specie of Bengal, on account of his annual tribute, which, when carried beyond our possessions, must in a great degree be lost to the necessary circulation, and may prevent that punctuality in our remittances which we have hitherto maintained, and may in time wholly incapacitate us from fulfilling the stipulations we are so desirous to preserve. In other words, the council were to hold out a kind of menace, that if the emperor declined to place himself entirely in their hands, and abandon all idea of sitting on the throne of Delhi, the Company might find it convenient to forget the obligation they had undertaken, and cheat him out of the price they had solemnly promised to pay him in return for the grant of the dewannee. About the very time when the directors were thus preparing the council for committing a gross breach of faith, Sir Robert Barker was by their orders escorting Shah Alum to the frontier of the province, “as a mark of gratitude and respect,” and entreating him, on the eve of his departure for Delhi, in the name of the council, and in words which have been already quoted, “of the attachment which they felt towards him, and of the readiness with which the Company would receive and protect him, should any reverse of fortune compel him once more to return to their provinces.” It is needless to say of the quotations given above, that their professions were utterly hollow, and that the directors, so far from entertaining friendly feelings toward the emperor, were only thinking how they might recruit their finances by taking a sordid and ungenerous advantage of his necessities.

The views thus expressed by the directors were not lost upon Hastings, who, seeing that nothing would please his employers so much as money, by whatever means obtained, had little difficulty in devising a scheme which could not fail to bring a large sum into their treasury. The Rohillas, when threatened with destruction by the Mahrattas, had, as we have seen, thrown themselves, in a kind of despair, into the hands of the Nabob of Oude, and agreed to pay forty lacs of rupees as the price of their deliverance from Mahratta oppression. It is not quite clear to whom they were to pay this sum—whether to the Mahrattas, who agreed to depart on the nabob’s undertaking to guarantee the payment, or to the nabob, who claimed it as a stipulated price which was to be paid him for procuring the departure of the Mahrattas, whether by peace or war. This much is certain—the nabob gave his guarantee, the Rohilla chiefs gave him their bond, and the Mahrattas departed. In point of fact, however, none of the parties to the transaction performed their proper part in it. The Mahrattas departed, not because they had been bought off, but because domestic dissensions, consequent on the death of the Peishwa Madhoo Row, required their presence nearer home. The nabob consequently had done nothing to procure their departure, and having made no payment to them under his guarantee, had no right to keep up the bond against the Rohilla chiefs. Hafiz Rahmet, therefore, who had transacted with him in their name, and who had actually paid him five lacs to account, made only a reasonable demand when he requested that the bond should be cancelled. The nabob, however, was not disposed to act fairly in the matter. He had long been bent on annexing to Oude the whole of Rohilcund, or at least that part of it which extended from the left bank of the Ganges eastward to his own frontier, and he was determined to use the non-payment of the bond as a pretext for carrying out this scheme of gross spoliation. The absence of the Mahrattas seemed to furnish the opportunity for which he had long been on the watch, and he could never strike the blow so effectually as when they could not interfere. Still there was one great obstacle. The Rohillas were descendants of one of the bravest of the Afghan tribes, and owed the high position which they had acquired in the country to the manifest superiority they displayed in the arts both of peace and of war. Their lands were the best cultivated in Hindoostan; and though, from the number of petty chiefs among whom they were divided, internal feuds were frequent, they were ever ready in a common danger to rally round their national standard. It was said that when thus united they could bring 80,000 fighting men into the field. Such a host, animated with the genuine spirit of freedom, the Nabob of Oude durst not encounter; and therefore his only hope of accomplishing their destruction was by means of the assistance which he might be able to obtain from the veteran troops of the Company. To this object, therefore, all his efforts were directed.

When the Mahrattas had extorted the cession of Corah and Allahabad from the emperor, and were threatening an invasion of Oude, the nabob in alarm applied to the Bengal presidency, and was relieved from his fears by the arrival of the first brigade, which had been ordered to cross the Caramnassa and effect a junction with him. He was at the same time told that their operations would be entirely defensive; and accordingly the council, in explaining this movement to the directors, declared it to be their unanimous resolution that nothing should either tempt or compel them to overstep the strict line of defence, or allow their army to pass beyond the nabob’s frontier. “To this resolution,” they added, “we shall strictly adhere.” The nabob, though thus discouraged, did not despair. He was well aware of the financial difficulties with which the Company were contending, and had great confidence in the potency of a bribe. He therefore proposed a personal interview with the president at Benares; and the council, convinced that such a meeting might prove advantageous to the Company’s affairs, not only consented to it, but left Hastings very much at liberty to follow his own course, because they felt it impossible to mark out any precise line for his guidance, and reposed the most entire confidence in his experience and abilities. He reached Benares on the 19th of August, 1773, and on the 7th of September concluded what has been called the treaty of Benares. Its leading articles were, that the districts of Corah and Allahabad, which less than three months before had been formally taken possession of by one of the members of the Calcutta council, “in the name of the Company, acting as allies to the King Shah Alum,” should be ceded to the nabob for fifty lacs of rupees, payable to the Company, twenty in ready money, and the remainder in two years, by equal instalments; and that for whatever of the Company’s forces the nabob might require, he would pay at the fixed rate of 210,000 rupees per month for a brigade.

In regard to the former of these articles, it is only necessary to observe that it bore injustice on the very face of it, inasmuch as it engaged the Company to sell for their own behoof territories which, according to their own showing, were held by them in trust. The latter article looked harmless enough, but it soon appeared that more was meant than its words implied, and it was accompanied by a secret understanding which bound the Company to accept of money as the price of blood, and hire out their troops as mercenaries for the perpetration of abominable wickedness. Hastings, on resuming his seat at the Calcutta board, on the 4th of October, gave a detailed report of his proceedings, but seems not to have thought it prudent to mention how far he had committed himself in regard to the furnishing of troops. “The vizier,” he said, “was at first very desirous of the assistance of an English force to put him in possession of the Rohilla country lying north of his dominions and east of the Ganges. This has long been a favourite object of his wishes.” Referring to the same subject on another occasion, he says, “I found him (the vizier or nabob) still equally bent on the design of reducing the Rohillas, which I encouraged, as I had done before, by dwelling on the advantages which he would derive from its success.” It may, therefore, be assumed, without the least breach of charity, that in the article fixing the monthly pay of a Company’s brigade, the project which lay nearest the nabob’s heart, and which Hastings says that he encouraged, was distinctly understood to be the special service on which the brigade was to be employed. It was probably from some kind of consciousness that the transactions in which he had been engaged would not bear the light, that Hastings at this time applied to the council, and found them complacent enough to delegate to him a very important part of their authority. This was the appointment of an agent to reside at the vizier’s court, and be the medium of communication between him and the president in regard to all matters which seemed to require secrecy. Hastings’ own account of the matter is as follows:—“In the course of our conversation the vizier frequently expressed the satisfaction which he had received from our meeting, and from the friendly and confidential intercourse which had taken place between us. Though such professions are not always to be received in their literal sense, I took occasion from them to ask him whether it would be agreeable to him that a person in whom I confided should be appointed by me to reside near his person, for the sake of perpetuating and strengthening the good understanding so happily begun, as well as for the transaction of such ordinary affairs as might not suit the formality of a correspondence by letter, but which in their amount are always found to be productive of important effects.” The nabob of course declared that “it would be entirely pleasing to him.” “It now rests with you, gentlemen,” said Mr. Hastings, addressing the board, “to determine on the propriety of this appointment. I will offer it frankly as my opinion, that if you shall think it proper to intrust with me the sole nomination of such a resident, and the power of recalling him whenever I shall judge his presence to be no longer necessary, it may be attended with good effects; in any other mode I fear the appointment would exclude me from being the channel of communication between this government and the vizier, and prevent my availing myself of that influence with him which I have taken much pains to establish, and I hope not altogether unsuccessfully.”

The irresponsible and secret power which the president thus asked for himself was perhaps not more than it was expedient that he should possess, but it is very questionable whether, as implying a delegation of power, the council had any authority to grant it. Their duty, as the government of the Company was then constituted, was to act along with the president, and even dictate his proceedings by outvoting him when they disapproved them. This they could not do while they left him free to act without their knowledge in matters of the utmost delicacy; and it therefore cannot be denied that this appointment of an agent implied both a stretch of power on the part of the president, and a dereliction of duty on the part of the council. It appears, however, that all the members were not disposed tamely to acquiesce in the proceedings of the president. Sir Robert Barker, as commander-in-chief, had a seat in the council, and having arrived at Calcutta from the army, on the 7th of October, no sooner took his seat than he recorded his dissent from the treaty of Benares, as inconsistent with that of Allahabad in 1765. Mr. Hastings defended his treaty with great boldness. Corah and Allahabad, he contended, had been bestowed on Shah Alum for the support of his dignity and expenses, and he had no right to alienate them, at least to such dangerous neighbours as the Mahrattas. Still, by such alienation his property and rights were annulled, and he had no title to question the subsequent disposal. In thus arguing, Mr. Hastings chose to forget that the king was at the time of the alienation under duress, and that the council on this ground had taken possession of the districts in his name and as his allies. When the sunnuds for the dewannee were mentioned, Mr. Hastings insisted that they could in no way be considered dependent on the emperor’s possession of Corah and Allahabad; and in reply to the remark by Sir Robert Barker, that “it was more than probable we should soon see these sunnuds in the hands of other nations,” exclaimed, “What will they avail them? It was not the want of the sunnuds of Shah Alum which defeated the long-concerted projects of the Duc de Choiseul, nor will the possession of them quicken the designs of the Mahrattas against us. The sword, which gave us the dominion of Bengal, must be the instrument of its preservation; and if (which God forbid) it shall ever cease to be ours, the next proprietor will derive his right and possession from the same natural charter.” However true this might be in substance, Mr. Hastings ought not to have forgotten that the possessions of the Company had hitherto been held by a very different tenure, and that having accepted of the dewannee as a grant from the emperor, on certain stipulated terms, it was the height of injustice to violate these terms, under the pretext that possession had been originally secured, and was henceforth to be maintained only by the sword.

The new policy which Mr. Hastings had inaugurated at Benares, was soon developed. On the 18th of November, the Nabob of Oude informed the Bengal council that Hafiz Rahmet Khan and other Rohilla chiefs intended to take possession of Etawah, and the rest of the country belonging to the Mahrattas in the Doab. It is not easy to see what title he had to object to this. The territory in question was not his; and if the Rohillas could succeed in wrestling it from the Mahrattas, to whom he said it belonged, he could not fail to be a gainer, as the immediate effect would be to remove the Mahrattas to a greater distance from his frontier. His determination, however, was to quarrel with the Rohillas at all events; and therefore, without attempting to prove the reasonableness of his complaint, he continued thus:—“I therefore write to inform you, that if such is their intention, I will not put up with it, but shall undoubtedly undertake an expedition against them; for, in the first place, they have not made good a single daum (the fortieth part of a rupee) of the forty lacs of rupees, according to their agreement; and in the next, they are now going to take possession of another country. This I will never submit to, and I am therefore determined to punish them.” To this tirade the council might and ought to have answered, that they had no right or interest to interfere between him and the Rohillas; if he was determined, as he said, to punish them, they would only advise him to count the cost before provoking a war of which it was impossible to foresee the issue, and in which he could not expect any assistance from them, as they had pledged themselves again and again to engage only in defensive operations. The nabob perhaps anticipated such an answer, and therefore prepares to avert it by the following abrupt proposal:—“On condition of the entire expulsion of the Rohillas, I will pay to the Company the sum of forty lacs of rupees in ready money, whenever I shall discharge the English troops; and until the expulsion of the Rohillas shall be effected I will pay the expenses of the English troops, that is to say, I will pay them the sum of 210,000 rupees monthly.”

Had the council acted aright, they would at once have indignantly rejected this proposal, as insulting to the Company. Stripped of all disguise, it was in fact nothing else than a proposal to them to hire out their troops as mercenaries, and send them to deal death and ruin among a people distinguished above all the others of Hindoostan for noble qualities—a people whose possession of the soil was as ancient, and title to it as valid, as that of Sujah Dowlah to any portion of Oude, and a people against whom the Company had not even a shadow of complaint. Strange to say, this proposal, instead of being scouted, was seriously entertained. Why? Simply because the sum offered as blood-money was large in amount, and the Company’s treasury was sadly in want of it. In their consultations on this subject the council show that they had many misgivings. The president himself, though the prime mover in the business, doubted if the time was seasonable, “the Company being exposed at home to popular clamour—all their measures being liable to be canvassed in parliament—their charter drawing to a close—and his majesty’s ministers being unquestionably ready to take advantage of every favourable circumstance in the negotiation for its renewal. In this situation,” he concluded, “there appears an unusual degree of responsibility annexed to such an undertaking.” On the other hand, he did not lose sight of what he called the advantages; and confessed, more candidly than he had done before, how much he felt embarrassed by what had passed at Benares, and the assurance he had given the vizier of aid in the enterprise.

The council, according to their own account, were sadly perplexed. They “concurred heartily in wishing to avoid the expedition,” and even “agreed upon a letter to the vizier, couched in terms rather calculated to produce a refusal on his part to accept of aid, than to promote the undertaking.” At the same time, with strange inconsistency, they proceeded to act as if they had actually sanctioned it, by sending an order to one of their brigades to await the requisition of the vizier. The meaning of all these vague and contradictory statements must therefore be, that they had pledged themselves to take part in the enterprise, should the vizier choose to insist upon it, but continued to cherish a lingering hope that something might occur to change his views. If so, all their doubts were soon set at rest. The requisition from the vizier arrived, and the infamous transaction being formally completed, Colonel Champion received orders to advance from Patna at the head of a brigade. There was no longer any disguise as to the kind of service in which he was to be engaged, and he was distinctly told that the object of the campaign was the reduction of the Rohilla country lying between the Ganges and the mountains. On entering the vizier’s country he was to acquaint his excellency that he was at his service, and seek a personal interview, for the purpose “of concerting the intended operations in which the Company’s troops were to be employed.” In these arrangements the claims of humanity and justice were altogether forgotten. Nothing was said about mitigating the horrors of war to the unhappy people about to be sacrificed; but the money question was kept prominently in view, and an order given to march the brigade back to Benares in the event of its pay being allowed to fall a month in arrear.

Colonel Champion having commenced his march on the 21st of February, 1774, crossed the Caramnassa on the 24th of March, and was advancing toward the Rohilla frontier, when the celebrated leader, Hafiz Rahmet, sent a letter, earnestly urging an accommodation. This was found to be impossible, as the vizier, who had formerly made the non-payment of forty lacs of rupees the pretext for the war, now demanded two crores, equivalent to two millions sterling. The Rohillas, thus aware that their destruction was determined on, and that the Company, in whose equity they had hitherto placed some confidence, had left them entirely at the mercy of their cruel and vindictive foe, prepared to defend themselves as they best could. Hafiz Rahmet, at the head of about 40,000 men, had taken up a strong position; and when the brigade was seen advancing, on the morning of the 23rd of April, did not decline the encounter. The result cannot be better given than in Colonel Champion’s own words:—“It is impossible to describe a more obstinate firmness of resolution than the enemy displayed. Numerous were their gallant men who advanced, and often pitched their colours between both armies, in order to encourage their men to follow them; and it was not till they saw our whole army advancing briskly to charge them, after a severe cannonade of two hours and twenty minutes, and a smart fire of musketry for some minutes on both flanks, that they fairly turned their backs. Of the enemy above 2000 fell in the field, and among them many sirdars (chiefs). But what renders the victory most decisive is the death of Hafiz Rahmet, who was killed while rallying his people to battle. One of his sons was also killed, one taken prisoner, and a third returned from flight to-day, and is in the hands of Sujah Dowlah.

While the Rohillas were thus displaying a prowess which unhappily did not avail them, how was the Company’s favourite ally and liberal paymaster behaving? Again let Colonel Champion tell:—“I wish I could pay the vizier any compliment on this occasion, or that I were not under the indispensable necessity of expressing my highest indignation at his shameful pusillanimity; indispensable, I say, because it is necessary that administration should clearly know how little to be depended on is this their ally. The night before the battle I applied to him for some particular pieces of cannon, which I thought might prove of great service in the action; but he declined giving the use of them. He promised solemnly to support me with all his force, and particularly engaged to be near at hand with a large body of cavalry, to be used as I should direct. But instead of being nigh me, he remained beyond the Gurrah, on the ground which I had left in the morning, surrounded by his cavalry, and a large train of artillery, and did not move thence till the news of the enemy’s defeat reached him.” Then, indeed, there was no want of activity, and his troops rushed without a moment’s delay to the Rohilla camp, which they completely plundered, “while the Company’s troops, in regular order in their ranks, most justly observed, ‘We have the honour of the day, and these banditti the profit.’”

While reading these two accounts it is impossible not to feel indignation and disgust—indignation at the inhuman butchery of a brave people fighting manfully for all that was dear to them, and disgust, both at the dastardly wretch at whose bidding the butchery was done, and at the conduct of the Bengal presidency, who stooped to do his bidding from a base and mercenary motive. Fyzolla Khan, another of the Rohilla chiefs, made his escape to the mountains, with the remains of the army and a considerable amount of treasure; but the defeat and death of Hafiz Rahmet had decided the fate of the country and its inhabitants, who were forthwith pillaged without mercy, and subjected to every species of barbarity. The Company’s brigade having gained the victory, were obliged to remain mere spectators of the use which was made of it. As mere hirelings they were entitled only to their wages, and had no right to interfere any farther. The conquest was made for Sujah Dowlah, and he alone was the proper judge of what he ought to do with his own. What he did choose to do is on record. In another letter, written by Colonel Champion, within three weeks of his victory, he says, “The inhumanity and dishonour with which the late proprietors of this country and their families have been used, is known over all these parts; a relation of them would swell this letter to an immense size. I could not help compassionating such unparalleled misery; and my requests to the vizier to show lenity were frequent, but as fruitless as even those advices which I almost hourly gave him regarding the destruction of the villages, with respect to which I am now constrained to declare, that though he always promised as fairly as I could wish, yet he did not observe one of his promises, nor cease to overspread the country with flames, till three days after the fate of Hafiz Rahmet was decided.” In another letter he says, “The whole army were witnesses of scenes that cannot be described.” Various attempts have been made either to deny these atrocities, or to palliate them. Thus, Professor Wilson, in a long note to Mill’s British India (vol. iii. pp. 575, 576), not satisfied with exposing the gross exaggeration of a writer who affirmed that “500,000 families of husbandmen and artists had been driven across the Jumma, and that the Rohilla provinces were a barren and uninhabited waste,” becomes a zealous apologist for Mr. Hastings, and says, “The only extirpation proposed was that of the power of one or two Rohilla chiefs. It was not a war against the people, but against a few military adventurers, who had gained their possessions with the sword, who were constantly at war with their neighbours and each other, and whose forcible suppression was the legitimate object of the King of Delhi or the Nawab of Oude.” Again, he says that none were “included in the spirit of the treaty excepting such as were actually found in arms,” and that “the Hindoo inhabitants, consisting of about 700,000, were not otherwise affected by it than by experiencing a change of masters, to which they had been frequently accustomed.” These statements are gratuitous and unsupported contradictions of the testimony borne by the most competent of eye-witnesses. Colonel Champion distinctly says that amongst the 2000 who fell in the field were “many sirdars” or chiefs. Those who fell could not have been a very large proportion of those who were engaged, and escaped by flight. On what ground, then, does Professor Wilson limit their whole number to “one or two Rohilla chiefs,” or to “a few military adventurers?” Again, Colonel Champion represents the misery as “unparalleled,” describes the country as “overspread with flames,” and distinctly asserts, in a letter not yet quoted, that “above a lac of people (100,000) have deserted their homes in consequence of the defeat of Hafiz.” When a ruthless soldiery, doubtless cruel and rapacious in proportion to the cowardice they had displayed, were let loose upon a defenceless population, it is impossible to believe that the Hindoo inhabitants were not otherwise affected than by “experiencing a change of masters.”

shown on the field of battle, were let loose upon the country, and continued for days devastating it with fire and sword, is it possible that the Hindoo inhabitants could have escaped without experiencing more than a “change of masters, to which they had been frequently accustomed?” There is nothing gained either by understating or exaggerating the case. It must be admitted on all hands that numerous lives were sacrificed, and a fearful amount of misery inflicted in the Rohilla war; and the question ever and anon returns, Had the Bengal presidency any right to take part in this war, and sell the services of their troops for money to a cruel and dastardly tyrant? So long as this question must be answered in the negative their conduct remains without excuse.

Before the Rohilla war was finished, Nujcef Khan, who commanded Shah Alum’s army, arrived to claim a share of the spoil! Sujah Dowlah, who held and piqued himself on the title of vizier or prime minister of the Great Mogul, felt it to be decent, if not necessary, in most of his expeditions, to act with the emperor’s sanction. He was thus brought into frequent communication with the court of Delhi, and had even on a recent occasion taken part in a campaign in which Agra was wrested from the Jats, and annexed once more to the so-called Mogul empire, of which it had long been the capital. During this campaign the nabob had explained his designs against the Rohillas, and entered into a treaty, by which Shah Alum, in return for assisting him with his army, was to share half his conquests. It was in terms of this treaty that Nujcef Khan had now made his appearance. As the conquest was already achieved, the nabob was most reluctant to part with any of its advantages. Unable to deny the treaty, he endeavoured to evade it, by asserting that in his copy of it Shah Alum was bound to take the field in person. When the copy was produced, it contained no such stipulation, and Colonel Champion, not knowing how to decide between the claimants, consulted the governor and council. The case was puzzling. If the nabob was bound by treaty to share his conquests with the emperor, how could they set the treaty at nought by conquering for the nabob alone? and, on the other hand, if they did not conquer for him alone, how could they demand from him the whole hire for which they had stipulated, and for which, moreover, they could scarcely help feeling that they had made sacrifices which money’s worth could not compensate? At first they refused to “entertain so bad an opinion of the vizier as to suppose him capable of acting in avowed breach of a treaty.” When the facts proved too stubborn, and the treaty could not be denied, they seemed inclined to do the honest thing, and instructed Colonel Champion, that “if he should acknowledge such a treaty, you must undoubtedly abstain from further hostilities in abetment of his breach of faith.” At last, on further consideration, they managed to get quit of their scruples, and announced their decision in the following terms:—“It is our intention to persevere in pursuit of the object which originally engaged us in the present enterprise, and to adhere strictly to our engagements with the vizier, without suffering our attention to be diverted by foreign incidents or occurrences.” In other words, the transaction of the vizier was of a kind which would not allow them to be very fastidious, and without inquiring whether it was consistent with his other obligations, they were determined to perform their part of it to the very letter, and thereby establish an indefeasible right to all for which they had stipulated in return.

The Rohilla war was still to be subjected to a severe ordeal. The council had embarked in it on their own responsibility, not only without consulting the directors, but in direct opposition to the course of policy which they had repeatedly enjoined. It was absolutely necessary, therefore, in communicating their proceedings to the court, to strengthen their case by every plea that could be urged in its justification. Accordingly, in their letter of explanation, dated 17th October, 1774, setting out with the general affirmation that “every circumstance that could possibly favour this enterprise, by an uncommon combination of political considerations and fortuitous events, operated in support of the measure,” they arrange their pleas under eight distinct heads. These we shall allow them to state in their own words:—

“1. Justice to the vizier for the aggravated breach of treaty in the Rohilla chiefs. 2. The honour of the Company, pledged implicitly by General Barker’s attestation for the accomplishment of this treaty, and which, added to their alliance with the vizier, engaged us to see redress obtained for the perfidy of the Rohillas. 3. The completion of the line of defence of the vizier’s dominions, by extending the boundary to the natural barrier formed by the northern chain of hills and the Ganges, and their junction. 4. The acquisition of forty lacs of rupees, and of so much specie added to the exhausted currency of these provinces. 5. The subsidy of 210,000 rupees per month, for defraying the charges of one-third of our army employed with the vizier. 6. The urgent and recent orders of the Company for reducing charges, and procuring the means to discharge the heavy debt at interest, heightened by the advices of their great distresses at home. 7. The absence of the Mahrattas from Hindoostan, which left an open field for carrying the proposed plan into execution. 8. The intestine divisions and dissensions in their state, which, by engaging them fully at home, would prevent interruptions from their incursions, and leave a moral certainty of success to the enterprise.”

All these pleas have already been weighed and found wanting, and therefore a very few additional remarks will suffice. On a slight inspection it will be seen that all the above pleas admit of being reduced to three general heads:—1. The obligation to engage in the war. 2. The advantages, partly to the nabob and partly to the Company. 3. The circumstances favourable to success. The obligation embraces the two first pleas, and is founded on an alleged breach of treaty by the Rohillas, and a real or implied guarantee of the terms of that treaty by the Company. Now, it is almost needless to observe, that the breach of a treaty, however aggravated, does not necessarily call for the interference of a third party. The Nabob of Oude and the Rohillas were two independent Indian states, and perfectly entitled to transact with each other. If an injustice was committed, the aggrieved party had the remedy in his own hands. What right, then, had the Company to set themselves up as redressers of grievances? On general grounds, therefore, the interference of the Company was totally unauthorized. But then, it is said, the honour of the Company was “pledged implicitly, by General Barker’s attestation, for the accomplishment of this treaty.” It is difficult to give a meaning to these words, which are evidently made vague for the very purpose of darkening the subject. The Company either guaranteed this treaty or they did not. If they did, why not say so at once, and produce evidence of the fact, instead of using such indefinite verbiage as an “attestation for the accomplishment of the treaty?” If they did not guarantee it, how could the violation of it be any ground for their engaging in an exterminating war? The treaty was, as we have already seen, rendered inoperative by a change of circumstances, and none of the parties to it were to be blamed for not performing conditions which had become impracticable. If any one of them was more culpable than another, it was the nabob, who, having obtained a bond for a sum of money, merely to cover his guarantee, insisted on payment, without having done anything to entitle him to it. But even granting that the Rohillas had violated the treaty, and that the Company had a right to call upon them to fulfil it, it ought to be remembered that the Rohillas offered terms of accommodation, and were rudely repulsed by the nabob, who, instead of the original claim of forty lacs, refused to be satisfied with less than two crores. Surely if the Company were only interfering to enforce the treaty, it was their duty to have stepped forward then, and accepted performance as payment in full of all demands. As they declined to do so, it is plain that all they say about the obligation of the treaty is mere pretence. In fact, they interfered not from any sense of obligation, but for the purpose of realizing certain advantages.

These advantages form the subject of the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth pleas. The third states the advantage to the vizier. By taking possession of the Rohilla territory situated east of the Ganges, he improved the line of defence. What then? Is the benefit which you may derive from the possession of your neighbour’s property a sufficient justification for seizing it, and expelling him by fire and sword? Unless this is maintained, it is vain to talk of the nabob’s right to improve his line of defence. But then think of the advantages to the Company. While ostensibly avenging the wrongs of the nabob, they were replenishing their exhausted treasury, maintaining a third part of their army free of expense, and helping to reduce debt and relieve distresses, by which they were in danger of being overwhelmed. These are the advantages which, when hypocritical pretences are thrown aside, must stand forth as the only real inducements to take part with the nabob. It was a mere mercenary bargain, by which the lives and freedom of thousands of human beings were shamefully bartered for money. Until the distinctions between right and wrong are abolished, there cannot be a successful vindication of the Rohilla war.

The tone of the remarks subjoined to the above pleas indicate that the council had great doubts whether the directors would hold them to be sufficient. “These,” they say, “were the inducements which determined us to adopt this new plan of conduct; in opposition to which, one powerful objection, and only one, occurred, namely, the personal hazard we ran in undertaking so uncommon a measure without positive instructions, at our own risk, with the eyes of the whole nation on the affairs of the Company, and the passions and prejudices of almost every man in England inflamed against the conduct of the Company and the characters of their servants. Notwithstanding which, we yielded to the strong necessity imposed upon us by the inducements above mentioned, in spite of the suggestions and the checks of self-interest, which set continually before our eyes the dread of forfeiting the favour of our employers and becoming the objects of popular invective, and made us involuntarily rejoice in every change in the vizier’s advices which protracted the execution of the measure. At length, however, his resolution coinciding with our opinions, the enterprise was undertaken.” There is evidently more rhetoric than logic in these remarks. To obey the clear call of duty in the face of popular clamour, and even at the risk of offending their employers, would undoubtedly have been a meritorious act. But wherein lay the “strong necessity” of which they speak? In nothing but the desire of money. It was the knowledge of this desire that first emboldened the nabob to make his iniquitous proposal; it was the prospect of gratifying this desire that tempted the council to listen to it, and finally accede to it, though they must have foreseen the cruelty and injustice of which it was to make them the mercenary and guilty agents; and when the deed was done, it is still money that is placed in the foreground, and paraded before the eyes of the directors, as the most effectual apology for their proceedings. Accordingly they conclude thus:—“We shall, then, again return to the state of peace from which we emerged when we first engaged in the Rohilla expedition, with the actual possession or acknowledged right (which the power of this government can amply and effectually assert) of nearly seventy lacs of rupees, acquired by the monthly subsidy and the stipulation; and it rests with you to pass the ultimate judgment on our conduct.”

Considered merely in a pecuniary point of view, the Company had good cause to be satisfied with the results of Mr. Hastings’ administration. He had not been able materially to improve any of the regular sources of revenue. On the contrary, the plan which had been adopted, of letting the lands on leases of five years was threatening to prove a failure, in consequence of the inability of the lessees to fulfil their engagements; and the annual expenditure had increased. Still, however, large sums had been brought into the treasury, or been saved to it. Besides the seventy lacs (£700,000) above mentioned, an annual sum of forty-two lacs (£420,000) had been gained by cutting off sixteen lacs from the nabob’s allowance, on the ground of his minority, and repudiating the obligation to pay twenty-six lacs to the emperor as his reserved revenue from Bengal. The districts of Allahabad and Corah, after being occupied in his name, had been sold by the Company for their own behoof, to the Nabob of Oude. From this transaction alone a lump sum of fifty lacs (£500,000) had been obtained. The sums thus acquired or saved, though certainly by more than questionable means, exceeded £1,500,000 sterling, and must have greatly lightened the severe pecuniary pressure under which the Company were labouring. At the utmost, however, they only served to put off the evil day, but could not avert it. After a dream of prosperity, and even of relief to the British finances from the surplus revenues of Bengal, the directors were unable any longer to conceal the fact that they could not meet the demands upon them.

On the 17th of March, 1772, the directors recommended, and the proprietors resolved, that the dividend for the current half year should be 6½ per cent., or at the rate of 12½ per cent. per annum. So large a dividend was equivalent to an announcement to the public that the affairs of the Company were in a most flourishing condition. Great, then, was the surprise as well as indignation when it began to ooze out in the beginning of July that the Company, having no prospect of being able to meet their current obligations, would be obliged to borrow to a large amount. On the 15th of July they obtained from the Bank a loan of £400,000, and on the 29th another loan of £200,000. These sums, however, fell far short of their wants; and on the 10th of August the chairman and deputy waited upon the minister, and informed him that a loan of at least £1,000,000 sterling from the public was absolutely necessary.

Before these facts were generally known, the directors had seen the necessity of setting their house in order, and endeavouring to escape from the responsibility which they had incurred, by fixing the blame on any shoulders but their own. Mr. Sullivan, after a long contest, had regained his ascendency at the India House, and was now deputy-chairman. One of the first uses which he made of his victory was to display his old enmity to Clive. Accordingly, in January, 1772, just a fortnight before the meeting of parliament, his lordship, without any previous communication, received a dry official letter from the Company’s secretary, including copies of several papers which the court of directors had lately received, and acquainting him that if he had any observations to make, they would be glad to receive them as expeditiously as might be convenient. The papers accused him of misconduct in Bengal, and specified in particular four charges against him, as preposterous in their nature as absurd in their expression. The first was a monopoly of cotton, the second a monopoly of diamonds, and the third frauds in the exchange and in the gold coinage. The fourth deserves to be quoted verbatim:—“A monopoly of salt, betel-nut, and tobacco, and other commodities, which occasioned the late famine.” Clive answered, with becoming dignity, “You have not been pleased to inform me from whom you received these papers, to what end they were laid before you, what resolution you have come to concerning them, nor for what purpose you expect my observations upon them. I shall, however, observe to you, that upon the public records of the Company, where the whole of my conduct is stated, you may find a sufficient confutation of the charges which you have transmitted to me; and I cannot but suppose that if any part of my conduct had been injurious to the service, contradictory to my engagements with the Company, or even mysterious to you, four years and a half since my arrival in England would not have elapsed before your duty would have impelled you to call me to account.”

On the 30th of March, Mr. Sullivan, who, besides being deputy-chairman, had a seat in parliament, moved for leave to bring in a bill “for the better regulation of the affairs of the East India Company, and of their servants in India, and for the due administration of justice in Bengal.” In the debate on the motion several of the speakers threw out insinuations, or brought direct charges, which made Clive feel that he was put upon his defence; and he delivered a speech which proves that under a different course of training he might have been as great an orator as he was a soldier. After advertising to his second appointment as governor of Bengal, and to the facility with which he might have conducted the government, by winking at abuses and leaving matters as he found them, he continued thus:—“The third path was intricate. Dangers and difficulties were on every side. But I resolved to pursue it. In short, I was determined to do my duty to the public, although I should incur the odium of the whole settlement. The welfare of the Company required a vigorous exertion, and I took the resolution of cleansing the Augean stable. It was that conduct which has occasioned the public papers to teem with scurrility and abuse against me ever since my return to England. It was that conduct which occasioned these charges. It was that conduct which enables me now to lay my hand upon my heart, and most solemnly to declare to the house, to the gallery, and to the whole world at large, that I never in a single instance lost sight of what I thought the honour and true interest of my country and the Company; that I was never guilty of any acts of violence or oppression, unless the bringing offenders to justice can be deemed so; that as to extortion, such an idea never entered my mind; that I did not suffer those under me to commit acts of violence, oppression, or extortion; that my influence was never employed for the advantage of any man, contrary to the strict principles of honour and justice; and that, so far from reaping any benefit myself from the expedition (his second government), I returned to England many thousand pounds out of pocket.”

After thus vindicating his second government, and answering the four specific charges mentioned above, Clive entered on the general subject of the Company’s management, and told several important though rather unpalatable truths. The deplorable condition of Bengal he ascribed to mismanagement. “The public or foreign trade had more than doubled since the grant of the dewannee; but the inland trade, on which the prosperity and happiness of the people must chiefly depend, had, by a change of system, and under pretence of freedom of trade, been thrown into total confusion. The Company’s servants and their agents had in reality taken it into their own hands, and by trading, not only as merchants, but as sovereigns, had taken the bread out of the mouth of thousands of native merchants, whom they reduced to beggary. There was little decrease in the revenue of the dewannee, but the increase of the military and civil charges had been rapid and enormous. This was caused not so much by the simple pay of officers and men, as by the contingent bills of contractors, commissioners, engineers, &c. Every man now who is permitted to make a bill, makes a fortune.” He attributed the distressed state of the Company’s affairs to four causes—relaxation of government in those who had succeeded him, neglect on the part of ministers, misconduct on the part of the directors, contested elections, and the outrageous proceedings of general courts. When the dewannee was obtained, ministers ought, either of their own motion, or in concert with the directors, to have established some fixed plan of government. Instead of this they thought only of the passing day, and were so eager to share in the immediate profit, as to league with temporary proprietors in bullying the directors into their terms. The directors, again, instead of supporting the select committee, who had extricated their affairs from anarchy and confusion, had counteracted their efforts, and destroyed their own power, by dropping the prosecutions against those whom the committee had denounced as delinquents. Not satisfied with this, they had restored almost every civil and military transgressor who had been dismissed. The effect of these proceedings was to convert their covenants into mere blank paper; and encourage a hope of impunity for all offences. All these evils were aggravated by the violent proceedings of general courts, and the system of annual elections. “One half of the year,” he said, “was employed by the directors in freeing themselves from the obligations contracted at last election; and the second half wasted in incurring new obligations, and securing their election for next year, by daily sacrifices of some interest of the Company.”

Clive had undoubtedly good ground for the reproof he administered to ministers, directors, and proprietors; but it must be confessed that in administering it he displayed more valour than discretion. In some of his earliest proceedings in Bengal he had done several things on which we found it necessary to animadvert with some freedom; and it would therefore, to say the least, have been both more seemly and more prudent to have admitted it as probable that he himself, too, might occasionally have gone astray. By insisting that he alone was right, while others were wrong, he threw out a challenge which was at once accepted by his avowed enemies, and even in a manner forced upon others, who would willingly have forgiven him many errors, in consideration of the important services he had rendered. The consequence was, that an ordeal more painful than any to which he had yet been subjected, was prepared for him. On the same day, when Mr. Sullivan, who had been allowed to bring in his bill, moved the second reading, Colonel Burgoyne moved the appointment of a select committee, to inquire into the nature, state, and condition of the East India Company, and of the British affairs in the East Indies. This motion, made on the 30th of April, was carried without a division; and the committee, consisting of thirty-one members, appointed by ballot, was deemed of so much importance, that it was directed, as the session was far spent, to sit during the summer.

From the general terms in which the motion for the select committee was worded, and the appointment of the members by ballot, it might have been expected to be free from party spirit, and to be in no danger of losing sight of the leading subject of inquiry, in order to indulge in personalities. Unfortunately some of Clive’s most inveterate enemies had been balloted, and managed, almost at the very outset, to give the investigation a direction which could not have been originally intended, and, at all events, was not avowed when the committee was appointed. His proceedings were made the great object of attack, and he himself, when called as a witness, was examined, to use his own emphatic description, “as if he had been a sheep-stealer.” With such precipitation were the first and second reports hurried on, that they were presented to the house on the 26th of May, just before the rising of the session, and printed in the journals. Their contents—relating mainly to the revolutions of 1757 and 1760, the presents given or extorted, Clive’s jaghire, and the abuses of the inland trade—made the public generally acquainted for the first time with many startling facts, and prevented the interest which had been excited in Indian affairs from flagging.

It is singular that at this very time, when Clive’s enemies seemed to be gaining the ascendant, honours were showered upon him. On the 15th of June, a few days after parliament rose, he was installed as a knight of the Bath; on the 9th of October he kissed the king’s hand, upon being appointed lord-lieutenant of Salop, and had the honour of talking with his majesty on Indian affairs for nearly half an hour; and in December he was appointed lord-lieutenant of Montgomeryshire. Meanwhile, the financial difficulties of the Company, their loans from the Bank, and their application to the minister for a loan of at least £1,000,000 from the public, had been the general topic of conversation; and parliament was summoned to meet on 26th November, before the holidays, for the express purpose of taking their affairs into immediate consideration. The king’s speech accordingly contained the following passage:—“When I received information of the difficulties in which the Company appears to be involved, I determined to give you an early opportunity of informing yourselves fully of the true state of their affairs, and of making such provisions for the common benefit and security of all the various interests concerned, as you shall find best adapted to the exigencies of the case.” When the address in answer to the speech was voted, Lord North, the prime minister, in advertising to the distress of the Company, attributed it chiefly to the complicated union of civil and political power with their commercial affairs. He felt confident, however, that though embarrassed for the moment, they would be fully able, with a temporary assistance, to meet all their engagements. He concluded with moving that a committee of secrecy should be appointed, to inquire into the state and management of the Company. Colonel Burgoyne, under the impression that the committee of secrecy was meant to displace his select committee, thought it necessary to defend the latter from the charge of having forgotten the object of its original appointment, and affirmed, with much warmth, from his own knowledge, that its inquiries would disclose such a scene of iniquity, rapine, and injustice—such unheard-of cruelties, such violations of every rule of morality, religion, and good government—as were never before discovered; that in the whole investigation he could not find a sound spot whereon to lay his finger, it being all one mass of the most unheard-of villainies, and the most notorious corruption. Ultimately the select committee of thirty-one was revived, and a new committee of secrecy, of thirteen members, was appointed.

The committee of secrecy, in addition to the proper business committed to them, were directed to report on the steps taken by the Company to send out supervisors to India. It will be remembered that the three supervisors formerly sent out had perished at sea, but the idea had never been abandoned; and though parliament, by throwing out Mr. Sullivan’s bill on the second reading, had sufficiently expressed their determination not to allow of any interference with the remedial measures which they were contemplating, the directors, unwilling to be ousted from what they held to be their proper sphere of management, had, at the very time they were supplicating the government for aid, taken the bold step of appointing six individuals as supervisors, “with full powers for the regulation of their affairs abroad.” This was regarded as an interference with parliament while busily engaged in investigating the abuses which the commission was professedly intended to correct, and hence the committee of secrecy made a special report, recommending that a bill should be brought in to prohibit the sailing of the supervisors. This was resisted by the Company as oppressive and unconstitutional, but the ministry had no difficulty in carrying their point, and the prohibitory act was passed. Clive took part in the debate against the Company. “I consider this bill,” he said, “as an exertion, indeed, of parliamentary authority, yet extremely necessary; and I could wish that the Company had met this house half-way, instead of petitioning and quarrelling with the mouth that is to feed them. With respect to the gentlemen nominated for the supervision, they are themselves the best judges whether their abilities and integrity are equal to the important service in which they were to engage. Had they known the East Indies as well as I do, they would shudder at the bare idea of such a perplexing and difficult service. The most rigid integrity, with the greatest disinterestedness—the greatest abilities, with resolution and perseverance—must be united in the man or men who undertake to reform the accumulating evils which exist in Bengal, and which threaten to involve the nation and the Company in one common ruin.”

On the 9th of March, the Company, unable longer to resist the pressure upon their finances, petitioned parliament for the loan of £1,500,000 at 4 per cent. The minister offered £1,400,000 at that rate, but coupled it with conditions which the Company denounced as harsh, arbitrary, and illegal. The conditions were, that the government should forego their claim of £400,000 a year from the territorial revenue till the loan was repaid; that till then the Company should not make a dividend above 6 per cent, nor afterwards above 7 per cent, till their bond debt was reduced to £1,500,000; that thereafter the public should receive three-fourths of the surplus receipts at home, the other fourth being appropriated either to the further reduction of the bond debt, or as a fund to meet contingencies; and that the Company’s territorial acquisitions should be permitted to remain with them during the six years of their charter still unexpired. As before, the opposition of the Company proved unavailing, and the bill was passed. A bill much more deeply affecting the constitution of the Company, and destined to become law under the name of the Regulating Act, was at the same time brought in by government; but it will be proper, before considering it, to give a short account of the result of the great struggle which took place in the same session of parliament, when Clive was put finally upon his defence.

The directors, who seem to have been willing to sacrifice decency and consistency to vindictiveness, had renewed their attacks upon Clive, by sending him, on the 4th of November, about three weeks before the meeting of parliament, an intimation that they had taken the opinion of counsel relative to the loss sustained by the Company from the payment of balances due to the renters of salt-pans in Bengal out of their treasury; the commission received by him on the revenues of Bengal after his departure thence; and the interest due on sums paid for duties on salt, betel-nut, and tobacco; and were advised that he, and others who had shared with him, were liable to make good that loss. To give a colour to the miserable spirit by which they were actuated, they professed an earnest wish for an amicable adjustment. Clive at once met them in this spirit, and, as they had mentioned arbitration, intimated that he had selected Mr. Madocks, an eminent counsel, as his referee. On this the directors pretended that mercantile referees only were admissible, and on Clive refusing to take this view, gave a plain indication of what had all along been their aim, by commencing a lawsuit, on the 2d of February, 1773.

With such jealous and unscrupulous coadjutors, the select committee, which, since the appointment of the secret committee, was very thinly attended, and had fallen under the management of some of Clive’s most virulent enemies, were furnished with ample materials for a plausible charge against him. On the 20th and 21st of April, the second and third reports of the select committee were brought up, and on the 10th of May, the chairman, Colonel Burgoyne, concluded a long speech by moving the following resolutions:—“1. That all acquisitions made under the influence of a military force, or by treaty with foreign princes, do of right belong to the state. 2. That to appropriate acquisitions so made to the private enrolment of persons intrusted with any civil or military power of the state, is illegal. 3. That very great sums of money and other valuable property have been acquired in Bengal, from princes and others of that country, by persons intrusted with the civil and military powers of the state; which sums of money and valuable property have been appropriated to the private use of such persons.” The dexterity with which these resolutions had been framed, made it difficult to gainsay them. The first two were carried without a division, and the third after some opposition. The general principle being thus recognized, there was little difficulty in making a practical application of it. On the 17th of May, Colonel Burgoyne again delivered a long speech on the subject, and converting his abstract resolutions into specific charges, concluded by moving, “That it appears to this house that the Right Hon. Robert Lord Clive, Baron of Plassey, in the kingdom of Ireland, about the time of the deposition of Surajah Dowlah, and the establishment of Meer Jaffier on the musnud, through the influence of the powers with which he was intrusted as a member of the select committee, and commander-in-chief of the British forces, did obtain and possess himself of the sum of two lacs and 80,000 rupees, as member of the select committee, and a farther sum of sixteen lacs or more, under the denomination of a private donation; which sums, amounting together to twenty lacs and 80,000 rupees, were of the value, in English money, of £234,000; and that, in so doing, the said Robert Clive abused the power with which he was intrusted, to the evil example of the servants of the public, and to the dishonour and detriment of the state.”

Though public spirit was pretended to be the motive for bringing these charges, there cannot be a doubt that they were mainly instigated by mere vindictiveness. The culprits whose misdeeds he had exposed and punished had freely spent part of their ill-gotten gains in poisoning the public mind against him, and the ignominy and ruin with which he was now threatened were owing, not as the above motion asserted, to his having “abused the power with which he was intrusted,” but to his having used it faithfully in punishing rapacity and injustice. Even, therefore, while admitting that Clive did many things at variance both with morality and sound policy, it is impossible to have any sympathy with those whose chief motive in accusing him was either to gratify an insatiable revenge, or to lighten the load of their own infamy, by compelling him to share it with them.

When thus brought face to face with his accusers, Clive again defended himself with great spirit and ability. “After rendering my country the service which I think I may, without any degree of vanity, claim the merit of, and after having nearly exhausted a life full of employment, for the public welfare, and the particular benefit of the East India Company, I little thought that such transactions would have agitated the minds of my countrymen in proceedings like the present, tending to deprive me not only of my property and the fortune which I have fairly acquired, but of that which is more dear to me—my honour and reputation.” “I have served my country and the Company faithfully; and had it been my fortune to be employed by the crown, I should have been differently rewarded. Not a stone has been left unturned where the least probability could arise of discovering something of a criminal nature against me. I am sure if I had any sore places about me they would have been found. The public records have been ransacked for proofs against me, and the late deputy-chairman of the Company, a member of this house, has been so assiduous in my affairs, that it appears he has neglected his own.” After giving a rapid sketch of his whole career, and referring to the honours and rewards conferred upon him, both by the Company and the crown, as proofs that his conduct was approved, he concluded thus:—“To be called upon, after sixteen years have elapsed, to account for my conduct in this manner, and, after an uninterrupted enjoyment of my property, to be questioned, and considered as obtaining it unwarrantably, is hard indeed, and a treatment I should not think the British senate capable of. But if such should be the case, I have a conscious innocence within me, that tells me my conduct is irreproachable. Frangas, non flectes. My enemies may take from me what I have; they may, as they think, make me poor, but I will be happy! Before I sit down, I have one request to the house, and it is, that when they come to decide upon my honour, they will not forget their own.”

After several other speeches, the farther consideration of the motion was deferred, in order that evidence might be heard at the bar, as Clive’s supporters had argued that that which had been taken by the select committee, and appended to their reports, was incompetent. On the 21st of May several witnesses were examined, and Clive, after a short speech, concluding with the words, “Take my fortune, but save my honour,” left the house. The consideration of Colonel Burgoyne’s motion was then resumed. In the interval some reaction had taken place, and not a few began to suspect that by affirming the whole motion as it stood they would do the very thing against which he had cautioned them—destroy his honour by forgetting their own. Hitherto the British nation had been proud of the conquests made in India, and regarded them as furnishing a bright page in their annals; but their representatives were now about to declare that they had derived from them nothing but disgrace, and were preparing publicly to attest their shame and remorse, by destroying the reputation and confiscating the property of the man by whose skill and prowess mainly the conquests had been made. At the same time, while repudiating the conquests, they were to proclaim their own inconsistency and hypocrisy, by clinging to the possession of them, instead of restoring them to those who had been wrongfully ousted. Such a procedure would not bear a moment’s examination; and hence, as soon as the debate was resumed, it was seen that the motion as it stood could not be carried. It consisted of two distinct parts—the one containing a statement of facts as to which there was no dispute, and the other affixing a stigma. The statement of facts, freed from some innuendoes with which it was unnecessarily incumbered, was reduced to the form of a distinct motion, in the following terms:—“That it appears to this house, that the Right Hon. Robert Lord Clive, Baron of Plassey, in the kingdom of Ireland, about the time of the deposition of Surajah Dowlah, and the establishment of Meer Jaffier on the musnud, did obtain and possess himself of two lacs of rupees as commander-in-chief, a farther sum of two lacs and 80,000 rupees as member of the select committee, and a farther sum of sixteen lacs or more under the denomination of a private donation; which sums, amounting together to twenty lacs and 80,000 rupees, were of the value, in English money, of £234,000.” This motion was put as an amendment on the original motion containing both the statement of facts and the stigma, and finally carried by a majority of 155 to 95. The stigma, thus virtually excluded, was then put as a separate motion, and negatived without a division. Ultimately, at five in the morning of the 22d May, 1773, a motion “that Robert Lord Clive did, at the same time, render great and meritorious services to his country,” passed unanimously.

In this great parliamentary contest, though the victory remained with Clive, many things occurred which must have been galling in the extreme to his proud spirit. The mere fact of having been put upon his trial was degrading, and the acquittal was not pronounced in decisive and unqualified terms. Taken in connection with the resolutions to which the house had previously assented, it in fact amounted simply to this—that though Robert Lord Clive had possessed himself of an enormous sum, which properly belonged to the state, he had at the same time compensated for the delinquency by great and meritorious services. This certainly fell far short of the approbation to which he conceived himself to be entitled. He professed, however, to be satisfied, and in a letter written to Mr. Hastings on the 14th of October, 1773, nearly five months after, thus expressed himself:—“All the reports of the committees are published, and will of course be transmitted to you. A few envious and resentful individuals turned the whole attack upon me, and aimed at the ruin of my fortune and reputation. But the justice of the House of Commons defeated their intentions, and, by a great majority, passed a vote that I had rendered great and essential services to this country.” This was doubtless the light in which he wished to view the matter, but during the seasons of gloom and depression, to which he was constitutionally subject, the darker side of the picture presented itself, and he saw nothing but the degradation to which ingratitude and injustice had subjected him. These seasons of depression had unfortunately become more frequent, in consequence of miserable health, and an excruciating disease, which he sought to alleviate by an excessive use of opium. He had begun to use this drug when first in India, and had continued it ever since. In November, 1774, a violent return of his complaint obliged him to have recourse to his habitual remedy. As his agony was extreme, the medicine was probably used to an extent which impaired his reason, and made him no longer accountable for his actions. Certain it is, that on the 22d of the above month he died by his own hand. He had only in the end of the previous September completed his forty-ninth year.

While parliament was discussing and disposing of the charges against Clive, the general concerns of the Company had not been forgotten. The loan of £1,400,000 was agreed to by the government, but the terms were so obnoxious to the Company, that they presented a subsequent petition, in which they declared “their determination to depend on the laws of their country, and submit to the temporary difficulties which may attend the present situation of their affairs, rather than receive the loan offered to them upon the conditions prescribed.” Ministers were not to be thus balked. Since the Company would not voluntarily receive the loan, they determined to force it upon them, and brought in a bill, in which, after stating the above declination, it was declared that it seemed absolutely necessary to give assistance, “without leaving it in the power of the general court of proprietors, by withholding their consent,” to produce all the mischiefs that would inevitably result. The application of the loan was therefore not left to the Company, but expressly specified in the bill, while the directors were prohibited from accepting bills of exchange beyond a certain amount without the consent of the treasury. This bill was passed, and forms the Act 13 George III. chapter 64. The Regulating Act, passed in the same session, takes precedence of it, and ranks as Act 13 George III. chapter 63. Taken together, the two acts completely establish the supremacy of parliament, and leave the Company almost without a shadow of the independence for which they had so long and so strenuously contended. The Regulating Act in particular was represented by them as a direct attack on all chartered rights, and on this ground the city of London was induced to make common cause with them, and petition against it. In the House of Lords, also, where the rights of property are supposed to be most jealously guarded, it was strongly opposed. All this opposition, however, proved unavailing; and the Company had no alternative but to accept of a new constitution, not desired by themselves, but thrust upon them by the legislature.

The Regulating Act, so called from its being entitled, “An act for establishing certain regulations for the better management of the affairs of the East India Company, as well in India as in Europe,” proceeding on the preamble that the several powers and authorities granted by charters to the United Company of Merchants trading to the East Indies, have been found by experience insufficient to prevent various abuses which have prevailed in the government and administration of their affairs, as well at home as in India, begins in its first section by striking at what was regarded by many as the very root of the evil, by making an important change in the constitution of the courts both of directors and proprietors. Hitherto the directors were elected only for a year, and might consequently have undergone a complete change at each annual election. One obvious result was, that in a body so fluctuating and so apt to be revolutionized, no regular and continuous system of policy could be adopted. Another result, equally obvious, and perhaps still more pernicious, was that the directors, knowing how precarious their seats were, too often yielded to the temptation of securing them by bartering their patronage for votes. In this way, as Clive justly and graphically described it, they spent the first half of their year in discharging the obligations by which they had purchased their seats, and another half in canvassing and preparing for a new election. For these evils an important remedy was now provided by the very first section, which enacted that at the next general election of directors, “instead of an election of twenty-four directors, to serve for the space of one year only,” there should be chosen six directors for one year, six for two years, six for three years, and six for four years; and that thenceforth, at every subsequent annual election, only six new directors should be chosen to supply the place of those whose term of service had expired. Coupled with this enactment were two provisoes of questionable utility. The one was that the six retiring directors should not be capable of immediate re-election; and the other was that no servant of the Company should be eligible as a director after his arrival in England, till he had resided in it two years. The effect of the former rule was to deprive the Company of the services of a director at the very time when they had become most valuable, in consequence of the experience which he had acquired. If his conduct had been such as to obtain the confidence of the proprietors, it is not easy to see why they should have been prohibited from reappointing him. Besides, the rule was rendered in a great measure futile by a private arrangement, which was generally acquiesced in by all parties. The six retiring directors only remained excluded for a single year, and were then proposed for re-election. In this way a kind of regular rotation was kept up; and there might be said to be, in fact, thirty directors—twenty-four actually in office, and six waiting to be re-elected as soon as their year of exclusion should expire. The other rule, requiring a residence of two years in England, was evidently intended to prevent an abuse of which there had been several noted examples. Some servant of the Company, gorged with ill-gotten wealth, arrived from the East, and by a free expenditure of it, or large purchases of stock, secured a seat in the direction merely as a means of sheltering his own delinquency. Still it could hardly be necessary, in order to defeat the aims of a stray delinquent, to disqualify all the other servants of the Company during the two years when their knowledge and experience were most fresh, and hence, it is to be presumed, most available.

The other important change in the constitution of the home courts regarded the qualification of voters. Hitherto every proprietor of £500 of stock had a vote; only six months’ possession was required, and no amount of stock, however large, gave more than a single vote. The new enactment was, that though £500 of stock would entitle the proprietor to attend the general courts, £1000 of stock was necessary to give one vote, while £3000 gave two, £6000 three, and £10,000 or more, four votes. Possession for twelve months was, moreover, required; and in addition to the sanction of an oath, many stringent regulations were made for the purpose of preventing the multiplication of votes by means of collusive transfers—a practice which, though illegal, was notorious, and had been productive of many scandalous abuses. The £500 proprietors clamoured loudly against the wholesale confiscation of what they called their rights and