CHAPTER V.

State of matters at Madras—Misunderstandings with Sir Robert Fletcher—New expedition against Tanjore—State of matters at Bombay—Expedition against the Nabob of Baroach—Negotiations with the Mahratta—Capture of Salsette—Proclamation of the new government of Bengal—Dissensions in the council—Governor-general in a minority—Governor-general charged with corruption by Nuncomar—Nuncomar accused of forgery, convicted, and hanged—Disturbances in Oude—Violent dissensions at Madras—Arrest and death of Lord Pigot, the governor—Proceedings of the Bombay government—Capture of Salsette—Treaty with Ragobah—Treaty of Poorundhur.

SIR ROBERT FLETCHER had, as we have seen, been dismissed from the service of the Company, by sentence of court-martial, for the countenance which he gave to the mutinous proceedings of the European officers in Bengal, when double batta was reduced. After his arrival in England he continued loudly to complain of his treatment, and succeeded in inducing the general court of proprietors to recommend a revisal of his sentence. Generals Lawrence and Calliaud, rather unaccountably, accepted this invidious office, but had too much regard to their own military reputation to say that the sentence was wrong, and therefore only ventured to recommend his restoration on the ground of previous services. The main obstacle being thus overcome, he was not only restored, but appointed to the chief command of the army and to a seat in the council at Madras. The lessons of experience appear to have been lost upon him, and it was not long before he was at open rupture with a majority of his colleagues. The points in dispute, relating to some military arrangements, were not of much importance, but the discussions which they raised were so violent and unseemly as seriously to interrupt the public business. The only effectual remedy seemed to be to rid the council of Sir Robert Fletcher’s presence; and accordingly, on the 12th of January, 1773, it was resolved, by a majority of seven to two, that he should be ordered to Trichinopoly, to take command of its garrison. He protested against the resolution as equivalent to dismissal from the service, and at the same time applied for a passage by the first ship to England, that he might be able to give his attendance in parliament, in which, however incongruous the thing may appear, he had continued to retain a seat. The council replied that they would attend to his application as soon as he gave “the whole military establishment that example of obedience and attention” they had a right to expect. On second thoughts, he deemed it prudent to comply with the order to proceed to Trichinopoly, and the council, satisfied with having vindicated their authority, immediately declared that, “out of unfeigned respect and veneration for the honourable House of Commons, and their privileges, Sir Robert Fletcher, in consequence of his plea of privilege as a member of parliament, is, for so much as depends on this board, at full and free liberty to return to his duty in parliament, whenever and by whatever conveyance he shall think proper.” He returned to England accordingly, and had once more the good fortune to escape the penalty due to his misconduct. The directors, while condemning him for disputing the authority of the governor as commandant of Fort St. George, restored him to the chief command of the Madras army, as soon as General Smith, who had resumed it on his departure, should resign. They may, perhaps, have been induced to take this extraordinary course from a charitable belief that as Mr. Du Pré, the governor, with whom he had so violently quarrelled, had been succeeded by Mr. Wynch, harmony would not again be interrupted.

The peace which the nabob’s son so hastily concluded with the Rajah of Tanjore was of short duration. In June, 1773, Mahomed Ali, in a conference with the governor, complained that the rajah was not only ten lacs in arrear of the sum which he had engaged to pay him, but had applied for a body of troops, both to the Mahrattas and Hyder Ali, and had also instigated some marauders to ravage part of the Carnatic. At this time he merely intimated his intention to call the rajah to account; but a few days after, at another conference, he not only urged an expedition against Tanjore, but offered to pay the Company, in the event of their success, ten lacs of pagodas (about £350,000). The Madras council formally discussed the subject on the 22d of June, and gave it as their candid opinion that the rajah was scarcely, if at all, to blame. The conquest of Tanjore had long been the aim of the nabob, and the council had no doubt that his main object in the treaty which he had lately made with the rajah was to supersede and render inoperative the previous treaty of 1762, by which the integrity of his territory was guaranteed by the Company. Assuming that this latter treaty had been thus extinguished, the rajah was left without a protector, and therefore could hardly be blamed if he had, as alleged, courted the assistance of the only other parties who seemed at once able and willing to afford it.

The council having given this opinion, we naturally conclude, as an obvious inference from it, that they acquainted the nabob with their determination not to countenance him in a war which they believed to be unjust. They did the very opposite, and attempted to justify their conduct by reasons which they must be allowed to state in their own words. “It is evident,” they say, “that in the present system it is dangerous to have such a power in the heart of the province; for, as the honourable court have been repeatedly advised, unless the Company can engage the rajah to their interest by a firm promise of support in all his just rights, we look upon it as certain, that should any troubles arise in the Carnatic, whether from the French or a country enemy, and present a favourable opportunity of freeing himself from his apprehensions of the nabob, he would take part against him, and at such a time might be a dangerous enemy in the south. The propriety and expediency therefore of reducing him entirely before such an event takes place, is evident.” Put into fewer and simpler words, the argument is just this:—“Our relations with the nabob will not allow us to do the rajah justice. It is therefore reasonable to presume that he will seek justice elsewhere. As in this way he may become a formidable enemy, our true policy is to put it out of his power, by taking the first favourable opportunity of destroying him.”

Acting on these Machiavellian principles, the Madras council resolved to undertake the conquest of Tanjore for the behoof of the nabob. This transaction, which, in point of equity, may be regarded as a counterpart of the Rohilla war, was of course engaged in for large pecuniary considerations. The nabob was taken bound to make payment in advance, by cash or good bills, for the estimated expense of the expedition, to provide all necessaries except military stores, and to pay in future for 10,000 sepoys instead of 7000, the number previously fixed. The troops assembled for this expedition, at Trichinopoly, set out on the 3d of August, under command of General Joseph Smith, and three days after arrived within a short distance of Tanjore. On the 13th a letter was received from the rajah, in which, after declaring that he “had quietly submitted to the hard terms” imposed by the nabob, and violated none of the stipulations to which he had agreed, he continued thus:—“Some offence should surely be proved upon me before an expedition be undertaken against me. Without any show of equity, to wage an unjust war against me is not consistent with reason. This charitable country is the support of multitudes of people; if you will preserve it from destruction you will be the most great, glorious, and honoured of mankind. I am full of confidence that you will neither do injustice yourself, nor listen to the tale of the oppressor. I only desire a continuance of that support which this country has formerly experienced from the English, and you will reap the fame so good an action deserves.”

These remonstrances and supplications proved unavailing, and on the 20th of August the siege of Tanjore was commenced. The approaches were regularly made, and on the 16th of September so large a breach had been effected that preparations were made for the assault. The garrison, which mustered 20,000 fighting men, did not expect it to take place till daylight next morning, and were caught completely by surprise when at mid-day the besiegers, taking advantage of the hour usually allotted for refreshment and repose, rushed in and made themselves masters of the place. The rajah, Tooljajee, his family, and the commander-in-chief, Monacjee, were taken prisoners. Previous to the expedition the Dutch had been suspected of assisting the rajah. This suspicion was confirmed when they took possession of the seaport of Nagore and some other districts of Tanjore, alleging that they had become theirs by purchase. Both the nabob and the council declared their determination not to recognize this alleged purchase, the council in particular justifying their refusal by the following extraordinary argument: — “As the rajah held his lands of the nabob in fee, he could not, agreeable to the feudal system, which prevails all over India, alienate any part of this country to any other power without the consent of his liege lord, the ruler of the Carnatic Payeen Ghaut.” The assertion that the feudal system “prevails all over India,” and the argument founded upon it, are ludicrous in the extreme, and only prove into what incompetent hands the interests of the Company in the Madras presidency were at the time committed. Anything, however, would have sufficed them for a pretext. To show that they were in earnest, their troops were immediately put in motion, and the Dutch, aware of their inability to resist, were glad to compound the matter by resigning their purchase, and the jewels of the rajah, which they held in pledge, on being reimbursed for their advances. The nabob, elated with his new conquest, insisted on garrisoning it with his own troops, and began to make extensive improvements on the fortifications. He was aware that the Mahrattas, who claimed Tanjore as one of their dependencies, would resent the dethronement of the rajah, and he had some reason to suspect that the sanction which the Madras council had given it would not be ratified by the court of directors. In regard to this latter point, it is rather strange that the doubt was not cleared up till nearly two years had been permitted to elapse. The dethronement of the rajah was effected, as has been seen, on the 16th of September, 1773. An account of it, together with the documents and details, was received in London on the 26th of March, 1774. The last ships of the season did not sail till three weeks after, and the directors allowed them to depart without carrying a single despatch from them on the subject. In August they began for the first time to deliberate upon it, but it was January, 1775, before the papers and their views upon them were submitted to the ministry, in terms of the regulating act. Other three months passed away before a final resolution was despatched. It condemned all that the Madras council had done, deprived the president of his office for the share he had taken in it, and sent out a successor to repair the injustice, by reinstating the rajah on his throne. The details will afterwards be given. At present it is necessary only to advert to the extreme negligence of the directors in allowing an event of so much importance to remain so long unnoticed. They attempted a defence, which, however, amounted to little more than an admission that “the situation of affairs in England lessened the attention of the directors to political affairs in India.” This is a very poor apology for a sluggishness and indecision which, as will afterwards be seen, proved fruitful sources of mischief.

The presidency of Bombay, which, in the early history of the Company, was the most important of the three, had remained almost stationary while they were making rapid progress. Only a few isolated spots on the western coast of India and a few inland factories belonged to it, and it possessed nothing so extensive as to be entitled to the name of a territory. It was evident, however, from the course of political events in India, that a more prominent part was about to be taken by the Bombay presidency. As early as 1759, when a kind of anarchy prevailed at Surat, a vigorous effort had put them in possession of its castle, and they had ever since, under the nominal protection of the Mogul, been intrusted with the defence of the place, while the civil management was vested in a native official, with the title of nabob. The rights of the presidency in Surat had, as they conceived, been violated by the nabob of a neighbouring district, whose capital, Broach or Baroach, is situated on the estuary of the Nerbudda. After negotiation had failed recourse was had to arms, and the presidency despatched a body of troops against Baroach in 1771. Through some mismanagement the expedition did not succeed, and a new attempt was about to be made, when the nabob, despairing of being able to resist, made his appearance in Bombay. He professed to throw himself on the generosity of the Company, and signed a treaty on the 30th of November, agreeing to all the terms which they proposed. It soon appeared that his object had only been to gain time. He had been intriguing with the Mahratta chief, who, under the name of the Guicowar or Herdsman, had made himself master of nearly the whole of Gujarat. The treaty, therefore, was treated as a dead letter, and the chief of the factory which the Company had established at Baroach met with so much indignity, that he was ordered to retire to Surat. A new expedition was accordingly undertaken against Baroach, which was taken by assault on the 18th November, 1772, the same day on which the Peishwa Madhoo Row died.

For a long time the Company had been anxious to obtain possession of the islands of Salsette, Kenery, Hog Island, Elephanta, and Caranja, and of the port of Bassein. These were all in possession of the Mahrattas, whose pageant rajah lived at Sattarah, while all the powers of the government were exercised by the peishwa at Poonah. With a view chiefly to open a negotiation for the cession of the above localities, Mr. Mostyn was appointed resident at the peishwa’s court, and endeavoured to turn the capture of Baroach to account, by offering it as one of the equivalents to be given in exchange. His offers were rejected with little ceremony, and he had almost despaired of success, when a new and unexpected series of events seemed to bring it within his reach. While Madhoo Row was in minority, his uncle, properly called Ragonath Row, but better known by the name of Ragobah, conducted the government in his name. The power thus intrusted to him he was reluctant to relinquish, and entered into a series of intrigues, which obliged his nephew, shortly after attaining majority, to place him in confinement. The state of Madhoo Row’s health made it probable that the office of peishwa would soon become vacant. He was pining away under consumption, and, seeing little prospect of recovery, was anxious to secure a peaceable succession to his brother, Narrain Row. With this view he effected a reconciliation with Ragobah, and in several conversations with him, while Narrain Row was present, earnestly impressed upon both the necessity of concord for their mutual safety and the preservation of the government.

Early in December, 1772, Narrain Row repaired to Sattarah, and received investiture as peishwa from the rajah. For a time the reconciliation which Madhoo Row had effected seemed to be successful, and nephew and uncle lived together on terms of apparent amity. Ere long, however, old jealousies, fanned by domestic female feuds, revived, and on the 11th of April, 1773, Ragobah was again placed under restraint. If there was any danger from his intrigues, the place of confinement was rather strangely chosen, for it was an apartment in the very palace in which Narrain Row, when at Poonah, usually resided. While here, on the 30th of August, 1773, Narrain Row was barbarously murdered. A body of troops, after clamouring for arrears of pay, forced their way into the palace. Narrain Row was asleep, and, on hearing the noise, made at once for Ragobah’s apartments, closely pursued by Somer Sing, one of the leaders of the mutineers. He threw himself into his uncle’s arms, begging him to save him, and it is said that Ragobah so far interfered as to ask that his life should be spared. “I have not gone so far to insure my own destruction,” was Somer Sing’s reply; “let him go, or you shall die with him.” On this Ragobah got out upon the terrace, and the young peishwa was speedily despatched. Though the circumstances seemed at first to disconnect Ragobah with the conspirators, suspicion generally fell upon him; and he is said to have so far confirmed it by his own confession that he had given them a written order to seize Narrain Row, but not to kill him. This is the view generally taken by the Mahrattas themselves. If correct, it still charges Ragobah with being the leader in the conspiracy, though it declares him not guilty of the greater atrocity in which it terminated. One thing is certain—the deed was no sooner perpetrated than he endeavoured to profit by it by obtaining investiture as peishwa. It is true he stood next in succession, but the path was not so clear as he imagined it to be.

Ragobah, aware of the suspicion which attached to him, and the many enemies, open and secret, who were longing for his downfall, began his government with a great display of energy, apparently hoping to gain popularity by foreign conquest. Both Nizam Ali and Hyder had taken the field in order to profit by the Mahratta dissensions. Ragobah first turned his arms against the former, and obliged him to seek shelter under the walls of Beder. After several skirmishes, generally to the advantage of the Mahrattas, the Mogul army became straitened, and Nizam Ali submitted to a treaty which bound him to cede territory yielding twenty lacs of annual revenue. This territory, portioned out among the Mahratta chiefs, might have brought over many of those who were most opposed to the new government; but Ragobah, instead of making this politic use of it, allowed himself to be talked by Nizam Ali into a fit of generosity, during which he made him a present of all that he had ceded. This act of folly was the first of a series which produced a rapid decline of his fortunes.

After making peace with Nizam Ali, Ragobah turned his attention to Hyder, and contemplated an expedition, which might not only regain the territories Hyder had recently seized, but carry his arms into the Carnatic, and punish Mahomed Ali and the English for their proceedings in Tanjore. With this view he had proceeded beyond Bellary. Here the want of money was so severely felt, that on receiving from Hyder a sum of three lacs in hand, and a promise of twenty-two lacs more, Ragobah renounced all claim to three of the Mahratta districts in dispute. Hyder, on his part, recognized Ragobah as lawful peishwa, and agreed to pay to him, and him only, six lacs as tribute. The next step of Ragobah, had he followed out his original plan, would have been to enter the Carnatic and attempt the recovery of Tanjore; but he was startled from all his dreams of aggressive warfare by the announcement that revolutionary movements, which had for some time been visible to all but himself, had broken out, and that the leading ministers of the Mahrattas had leagued against him. At the same time with these news it was announced to him that Gunga Bye, the widow of Narrain Row, was pregnant, and might consequently have a son, to whom alone the office of peishwa would rightfully belong.

Having publicly announced the pregnancy, Nana Furnavese and Hurry Punt Phurkay, two of the leading Mahratta ministers, carried off the widow from Poonah to the fort of Poorundhur, situated about twenty miles to the south-east, on the summit of a rock which rises 1700 feet above the plain below, and 4470 above the level of the sea. The reason assigned was security, and was doubtless sufficient to justify the removal, but there were accompanying circumstances of a very suspicious nature. Several Brahmin women, in a state of pregnancy, were at the same time conveyed into the fort. The report put into circulation was that one of them was to be selected as a wet nurse, but it was generally believed that the real object was to make sure that Gunga Bye should have a son. Had her child been a girl, a boy of one of her Brahmin companions would have been substituted, and declared peishwa. Meanwhile the Mahratta ministers formed a kind of regency under Gunga Bye, and began to govern in her name.

Ragobah, now fully alive to the extent of his danger, hastened back from the frontiers of the Carnatic. Strong symptoms of disaffection had appeared in his own army, and he found it almost impossible to distinguish between friends and foes. Ultimately, however, the latter so far declared themselves that they formed a separate encampment, and hung upon his left flank, keeping a march distant from him, and taking every precaution against surprise. Their object was to form a junction with one of three armies which were advancing to dispute Ragobah’s further progress. Two of these were headed by Mahratta confederates; the third, strange to say, was headed by Nizam Ali, who, notwithstanding the recent treaty he had concluded with Ragobah, and the liberal treatment he had received from him, made no scruple of joining his enemies as soon as it seemed that he might thereby best promote his own interests. The rashness of Trimbuck Row Mama, one of the Mahratta chiefs, who had hastened across the Beema in the hope of finishing the campaign by one decisive blow, gave Ragobah an advantage of which he ably availed himself. Trimbuck Row Mama, in consequence, sustained a signal defeat, and was taken prisoner, after being mortally wounded.

This success revived the drooping spirits of Ragobah’s adherents, and he was able to raise a large sum of money partly by contribution, and partly by pawning some valuable jewels which Visajee Kishen had brought from Hindoostan, and delivered up to him, as being then the only recognized peishwa. With this money he had little difficulty in alluring troops to his standard from all quarters. For some days he continued his advance towards Poonah, at the head of an army of about 40,000 men. His enemies were in consternation, and had almost despaired of being able to oppose him, when, by a sudden change of tactics, he sacrificed all his advantages, and relieved them from their fears. Stopping short in his march on the capital, he suddenly changed his direction, and began to move off toward the north. Different explanations have been given. Some say that he found his army could not be trusted; others that he had promises of support from the great Mahratta chiefs Scindia and Holkar, and even from the English, with all of whom he was negotiating. Whatever may have been his motive, the result was disastrous. Scarcely had he turned aside from the path which was leading him to victory, when it was announced that on the 18th of April, 1774, Gunga Bye had given birth to a son. Though the circumstances justified suspicion, it seems to be established that the child was not supposititious. He was named Madhoo Row Narrain, and, when only forty days old, was formally installed as peishwa.

When Ragobah turned northward, and continued his march without interruption into Malwah, the almost desperate situation of his affairs might have been inferred; and yet it was at this very time that the Bombay presidency chose to enter into a negotiation with him, in which they unhesitatingly took it for granted that he was either the legitimate, or if not the legitimate, was at all events destined to be permanently established as the actual peishwa. The negotiation was opened by a communication made to Mr. Gambier, the Company’s chief factor at Surat. In this communication the agent stated that his master was desirous of being furnished with a sufficient force “to carry him to Poonah and establish him in the government; for which he would defray the charges of the expedition, make very considerable grants to the Company, and enter into any terms of friendship and alliance the president and council at Bombay might choose.” This proposal was submitted to the presidency on the 6th of September, 1774, and was at once most favourably entertained, as it seemed to promise possession of Salsette and the other localities which the directors had repeatedly evinced the greatest anxiety to obtain. Their answer, therefore, was, that they would assist Ragobah with all the troops they could spare, amounting, artillery included, to about 2500 men, on the following conditions—that he would advance from fifteen to twenty lacs of rupees; and on being established in the government at Poonah, would cede to the Company in perpetuity Salsette, the small islands contiguous to Bombay, and Bassein with its dependencies. It was also suggested that the Mahratta share of revenue in Surat and Baroach should be given over to the Company, and that protection should be given from Mahratta inroads into the Bengal provinces and the territories of the Nabob of the Carnatic.

Contrary to expectation, Ragobah offered far less than had been asked. He positively refused to cede Bassein and Salsette, and declared his inability to advance so many lacs. He was willing, however, to cede districts and claims in Gujarat yielding annually eleven lacs of revenue, to advance six lacs in cash, and pay one lac and a half monthly as the expense of 1000 Europeans, 2000 sepoys, and fifteen guns. The presidency, while hesitating about the acceptance of these terms, received startling intelligence from their agent at Goa. The Portuguese government had sent a formidable army from Europe, for the avowed purpose of recovering their lost possessions. Among these Salsette and Bassein were included. The Company had no right whatever to the places for which they were negotiating. The possession of them would give them important advantages, and it was natural that, with a view to these, they should be most anxious to secure it. The case of the Portuguese was very different. They had long been in undisputed possession of them, and though driven out by violence, had never recognized any legal right in the captors. There cannot be a doubt, therefore, that when they resolved to reassert their original title, and prepared to vindicate it by force, the question lay entirely between them and the Mahrattas, and the Company had no right to interfere. Their only justifiable course was to stand aloof till the question of possession was decided, and then endeavour to obtain the cession by peaceable means from the successful party. The Bombay council judged differently; and, without any regard to the justice of the case, determined to be regulated entirely by what they conceived to be their interest. They had even, some months before the negotiation with Ragobah was commenced, while pretending friendship for the Mahrattas, taken a mean advantage of their dissensions, and endeavoured to obtain possession of the fort of Tannah, situated at the head of Bombay harbour, through the treachery of the Mahratta killedar in command of it. That officer had opened a communication with Mr. Hornby, the Bombay president, to put the Company in possession of the place for two lacs and sixty thousand rupees; and Mr. Hornby, instead of rejecting the infamous offer with disdain, had, with the consent of his council, continued the treacherous correspondence, and offered one lac. After some higgling, the killedar agreed to accept of one lac and twenty thousand rupees; and this most dishonourable transaction would have been completed on these terms, had not the government at Poonah, alarmed on hearing of the Portuguese preparations, reinforced the garrison. These not being parties to the plot for surrendering the place, rendered it abortive, and thus saved the Bombay authorities from an act which would have covered them with disgrace.

When treachery had thus proved unavailing, the Bombay council met once more to deliberate on the subject, and on the 9th of December, 1774, resolved that they ought to anticipate the Portuguese. Why they ought to do so is not explained, and, it is needless to add, after what has been said above, could not have been explained satisfactorily. They were determined to gain possession at all events, totally unscrupulous as to the means; and accordingly an expedition, consisting of 620 Europeans, including artillery, 1000 sepoys, and 200 gun lascars, was despatched against Tannah on the 12th of December, General Robert Gordon conducting the military, and Commodore Watson the naval part of the enterprise. Both while negotiating with Ragobah and deliberating on the seizure of Tannah, the Bombay council had some doubt as to the extent of their powers. They were aware that by the Regulating Act their presidency was made subordinate to that of Bengal, and prohibited from making war without express sanction. It was argued, on the other hand, that the act was not to have full effect till the new government in Bengal was actually proclaimed, and that, as they had not yet received intimation to this effect, their former powers remained entire. This argument satisfied the council; but, singularly enough, if it was sound at the time, it ceased to be sound at the very time when practical effect was given to it. In the interval between the meeting which resolved on the expedition and its actual departure, a letter arrived from Bengal from the new government, stating that it had been regularly constituted, and desiring to be informed of the whole of the proceedings regarding Salsette, and the general state of the Bombay presidency. This was indeed a serious dilemma; but the same eagerness of possession which had already blinded the council to the injustice of their procedure, made them regard its illegality as a comparatively venial offence, and the expedition was allowed to proceed. A new difficulty immediately arose. The very day after the expedition departed, the Portuguese fleet anchored in the mouth of Bombay harbour, and lodged a formal protest against it. The council, however, were not now to be moved by remonstrances from any quarter. On the 20th of December the batteries were opened, and on the 27th the breach was declared practicable. The only thing necessary before the assault was to fill up the ditch. In attempting this operation a severe repulse was sustained, and 100 Europeans, of whom Commodore Watson¹ was one, lost their lives. On the following day, the 28th, a more successful attempt was made. Tannah was taken by storm, and the soldiers barbarously revenged their previous loss by putting most of the garrison to the sword. The conquest of Salsette, after the fort of Versovah, situated at its northern extremity, had been captured by a detachment, necessarily followed; and the whole of the possessions which the Company had so long and so earnestly coveted were in their hands by the 1st of January, 1775.

From the survey which has now been made, it will be seen that the Regulating Act did not come into operation under very favourable circumstances. In each of the three presidencies a conquest had been made on grounds which it is impossible to justify. The council of Bengal had lent themselves to a dastardly tyrant, and sent their troops to execute his cruel and wicked behests, for no better reason than because they were in want of money and he had agreed to give it to them. The council of Madras had in like manner become the tools of Mahomed Ali, and put him in possession of the kingdom of Tanjore, not because the rajah had done them any injury, but, on the contrary, because they had, by their own confession, injured him; and having thus reason to fear that he might become their enemy, deemed it necessary for their own security to aggravate the original injury tenfold, by robbing him of his personal liberty and depriving him of his kingdom. The council of Bombay had done iniquity on a less extensive scale, but, if possible, in a still more flagrant manner. In their conquest they could not even pretend the entanglements of allies whose importunities they found it impossible to resist; but unblushingly seized upon property possessed by one ally and claimed by another, simply because they had long coveted it, and had ceased to have any hope of obtaining it except by violence.

HISTORY OF INDIA

Messrs. Clavering, Monson, and Francis reached Kedgeree on the 14th of October, 1774, and immediately announced their arrival to the president, who deputed the senior member of council to wait upon them and pay the customary marks of civility. On the 19th they landed at Calcutta, under a salute of seventeen guns, and were received by Mr. Hastings at his own private residence. The following day the whole council, with the exception of Mr. Barwell, who had not arrived from the country, met, and ordered proclamation to be made on the following morning that the new government commenced on the 20th of October. After the proclamation Mr. Hastings, now governor-general, and the three members from England again met in council, and heard the general letter of the court read, together with a paper of instructions. It has been mentioned that parliament, in making their nominations under the act, seem not to have used any precautions to secure harmony in the new government. This important point, however, had not been overlooked by the directors, who dwelt upon it at some length and with some earnestness. Among the other instructions it was ordered that the council should meet twice a week, and that all correspondence with country powers, though carried on in the name of the governor-general only, should be under the immediate superintendence of the council—all letters proposed to be sent being previously approved by them, and all letters received submitted to them at their next meeting. As disputes concerning the powers of the governor and of the commander-in-chief, under their respective commissions, had frequently arisen, a commission was given to the governor-general constituting him governor and commander-in-chief of the fortress and garrison of Fort William and town of Calcutta, and another to General Clavering, appointing him commander-in-chief of all the Company’s forces in India. At the same time it was provided that, should the governor-general and council think proper at any time to issue orders to any officer in the army, these orders suspending or superseding those issued by the governor-general or commander-in-chief, were to be obeyed. On the suggestion of the governor-general the council adjourned till the 25th, when it was expected that Mr. Barwell would be able to take his seat.

When the full council met on the 25th, the governor-general put in a minute, reviewing the revenue system and the political state of the provinces. In the discussion which ensued symptoms of disagreement were strongly manifested, and the instructions of the directors on the subject of harmony were speedily forgotten. The Rohilla war at once became the subject of dispute. When the new government commenced it was understood to be still in progress. Fyzolla Khan, the Rohilla chief next in importance to Hafiz Rahmet, had, after the defeat of the latter, escaped to the mountains, and entrenched himself in a strong position, from which it was found impossible to dislodge him except by making regular approaches. The process would have been tedious; and as the Company’s troops had begun to show symptoms of disaffection, the result might have been doubtful. The nabob, therefore, became desirous for negotiation, and an agreement was made, by which Fyzolla Khan received a jaghire yielding a revenue of fourteen lacs and seventy-five thousand rupees in Rohilcund, and surrendered one-half of his treasure. This transaction, which terminated the Rohilla war, was not known at Calcutta at the time when Mr. Hastings’ minute was discussed; and on this account, as the war was supposed to be still subsisting, the members of council perhaps thought it the more necessary to lose no time in explaining their views.

In the course of the discussion General Clavering called for the original correspondence of Mr. Middleton, the resident in Oude. It will be remembered that the former government had allowed Mr. Hastings to appoint the resident and carry on the correspondence with him without divulging it to his colleagues, any further than he might think necessary. On this ground, while he offered to lay before the Board all the correspondence relating to public affairs, he alleged that there were other parts of a strictly private nature, consisting of unreserved and confidential communications, totally unfit for public inspection. These he must withhold. The resident, he said, was his own recognized agent, appointed on his sole responsibility, with the sanction of his late colleagues, and in conformity with the practice which had prevailed from 1757 to the present time. If the engagements undertaken in accordance with that practice were legal, no power on earth could authorize him to violate them; still less was he prepared to submit to an ex post facto law of so sudden a formation.

That the reasons for refusing the whole correspondence were not deemed satisfactory, and that even vague suspicions of corruption began to be entertained, is not surprising. Still, the maxim of doing nothing rashly ought to have prevailed; and the three new councillors, conscious how ignorant they were on all the matters on which they had been suddenly called to legislate, might have been content slowly and gradually to feel their way. It would seem, however, that their minds were not in the state best fitted for calm deliberation. Their feelings were ruffled by real or imaginary slights. They thought, and did not hesitate to make it a subject of complaint to the directors, that in the reception given to them on their arrival their dignity had not been sufficiently consulted. More guns ought to have been fired when they landed at Calcutta; the troops ought to have been drawn out; they ought to have been received at the council-chamber instead of Mr. Hastings’ private residence; the proclamation of the new government ought to have been made with more parade, &c. Those who could stoop to enumerate such points of etiquette must have felt the omission of them to be real grievances; and therefore it is easy to understand how readily, when a real ground of quarrel was discovered, it was embraced. The governor-general had a steady adherent in Mr. Barwell; but the three new councillors clung together as if only one mind and one spirit had animated them, and seemed determined to lose no opportunity of asserting the supremacy which their majority gave them. Without waiting for further inquiry, they immediately voted the recall of Mr. Middleton, requiring him to bring down the whole of his correspondence, as essential to a right judgment on the course of policy observed towards the vizier, as well as of the Company’s existing engagements with his excellency. The order to produce the correspondence may have been justifiable, but it was harsh in the extreme thus summarily to recall an official against whom no charge had been made. For anything that had yet appeared, Mr. Middleton might have been the person best qualified to sustain the interests of the Company at Lucknow; and, to say the least, it showed little regard for their interests to sport with them in this manner, in order to gratify a kind of personal pique against a third party!

When the majority thus recalled Mr. Middleton, of whom they knew nothing, they appointed Colonel Champion, the commander of the troops, of whom they knew as little, to supply his place; and at the same time proposed a series of instructions to be given him. He was to repeat the demand on the vizier for the forty lacs which he had promised for the expulsion of the Rohillas, to require payment of such sums as might be due, and the liquidation of all unsettled accounts. If the whole forty lacs could not be obtained, not less than twenty were to be accepted as an instalment, and the rest within twelve months. If the vizier refused these terms, Colonel Champion was to serve him with a protest. Nor was this all. Within fourteen days after receiving the instructions, he was to withdraw the brigade from Rohilcund into Oude, and then, unless the vizier declared it necessary for the defence of Corah and Allahabad, to march it back into the Company’s territories to its station at Dinagepore.

In all these proposed measures there was much ignorance and rashness, and in the most prominent of them gross inconsistency. At the time when this meeting of council was held, the Rohilla war was understood not to be finished, and yet a peremptory demand was to be made upon the vizier for forty lacs, though he had only engaged to pay them after the Rohillas should be expelled. Moreover, the councillors from England denounced, and justly denounced, the Rohilla war as an abomination; and yet their great anxiety now was to pocket the wages of it! Again, what could be more rash than to withdraw the brigade within fourteen days? For aught they knew, it might have been at the time in face of the enemy, or in a position where retreat might have been ruin. It is scarcely necessary to add, that if it were not intended to break altogether with the vizier, and either convert him all at once into an enemy, or at least to furnish him with an excuse for not fulfilling his engagements, nothing could be more indelicate and inconsiderate than the kind of treatment to which he was to be subjected.

Considering the temper of the majority, it would not have been wonderful if they had carried their proposals off-hand, and insisted that the instructions should be immediately despatched. They were allowed, however, to lie on the table till the next meeting of council, which was fixed for Monday, the 31st. On that day a letter was received from Colonel Champion, acquainting the council for the first time with the arrangement which had been made with Fyzolla Khan, and the consequent termination of the war. When the instructions were again discussed, the governor-general and Mr. Barwell, anxious that they should be either delayed or greatly modified, pointed out the effect they were calculated to have on the vizier, who might regard the communication made to him as equivalent to a declaration that the engagements made with him were no longer binding. They also urged, with great appearance of reason, that as the Rohilla war was the act of a past administration, the new government might have been satisfied with recording their disapproval of it, and with refusing, after it was finished, to allow the Company’s troops to be employed beyond the bounds which the policy of the court had prescribed. With regard to Mr. Middleton, they suggested that, instead of removing him, the better course would have been to confirm his appointment, and recognize him as the agent, not of the governor-general exclusively, but of the council at large. The majority were in no mood to listen to argument or expostulation, and the instructions were despatched very nearly in the form in which they were originally proposed.

The new government had rapidly degenerated into two hostile factions—the one consisting of the three new councillors from England, who formed a dominant and intolerant majority; and the other consisting of Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell, who, being unable as a minority to carry any measures, were to all intents excluded from any proper share in the administration. The very first communication of this heterogeneous council to the directors furnished a strange commentary on the lecture which had been read to them on the subject of harmony. So complete was the discord that it was impossible to frame a common despatch, and each faction was left to make its own separate statement. Of course, both partook very much of the nature of special pleadings. They are now undeserving of attention; but it may be worth while to state the views of the directors on a few of the leading points submitted to them. They deemed the cession or sale of Corah and Allahabad to the vizier “an act of great propriety,” and entirely approved of withholding all further tribute from Bengal to the emperor. They agreed in the assertion that the Rohilla chiefs had drawn their calamities upon themselves, by “refusing to fulfil their solemn engagements with the vizier;” but they deprecated the aid given by the government with the Company’s forces, as founded on wrong policy, and as contrary both to their frequently repeated instructions to keep the troops within the provinces, and to the general principles they desired to maintain. At the same time, the recall of the troops by the majority of the council was far too hasty, and might have been attended with inconvenience to the public service. On the subject of the correspondence they decided against Mr. Hastings, and gave it as their opinion that the whole ought to have been laid before the council. In conclusion, they expressed their regret at the differences which had arisen among the members of the government, but trusted that a sense of duty would animate them to an exertion of their utmost abilities in conducting the important affairs committed to them with the spirit of harmony and cordiality so essential to the welfare of the public interests, and to the prosperity of the Company. This advice, like that first given on the same subject, was absolutely thrown away. Length of time, instead of calming the strife, only increased its virulence; and the breach between the two continued to grow wider and wider, till proceedings took place which made it irreparable.

The dissensions in the Bengal council being matters of public notoriety, the natives became aware that the power of the government no longer centred in Mr. Hastings, but in the majority opposed to him, and that all who, from any cause, bore him a grudge, or conceived they had been in any way aggrieved by him, had now full opportunity of gratifying their resentment. The fact was not lost upon them; and plausible statements, charging him with acts of corruption, began to be circulated in various quarters. Had the majority of the council been better acquainted with the Bengalee character, or less prejudiced against the governor-general, they would have turned a deaf ear to such statements, or, at all events, been very slow of attaching any credit to them; but partly, it may in charity be presumed, because they did not know how easily charges of corruption could be concocted, and partly because they had already rushed to the conclusion that corruption must have been practised, they acted as if they had wished it to be generally understood that the surest avenue to their favour and patronage was to furnish them with the means of convicting the head of the government of dishonourable conduct.

As early as December, 1774, the Ranee of Burdwan, the widow of the late zemindar of that district, presented a petition to the council. Her son, a youth of only nine years of age, had, on his father’s death, been confirmed by the Company in the zemindary, and she had for some time acted as his guardian. Ultimately, however, she had been displaced to make way for a native dewan appointed by the Company, and superintended by their resident. Her petition charged the dewan with maladministration, accused Mr. Graham, the resident, of accepting bribes to wink at his delinquencies, and requested permission to repair to Calcutta with her son, for the purpose of substantiating her allegations. The majority having at once resolved on inquiry, granted her the permission she requested, and suspended the dewan from his office on the ground that his conduct could not be properly investigated while the papers and subordinate officials remained under his control. These resolutions were ineffectually opposed by the minority, who described the ranee as a troublesome, violent woman, whose presence at Calcutta would only give annoyance, and denounced the suspension of the dewan, without any proof of his guilt, as a violation of justice. On the 6th of January, 1775, a letter was received from Mr. Graham, who was now stationed at Hooghly, containing an indignant denial of the charges, and a categorical answer to the petition. Two strong points in Mr. Graham’s favour were, that he had little opportunity of interfering with the affairs of the zemindary, as he had finally quitted Burdwan six weeks after the succession opened to the young rajah, and that the ranee, for the purpose of concealing this important fact, had antedated the late rajah’s death three years. Mr. Graham offered himself for examination, but insisted that the ranee should previously be taken bound in a heavy penalty, to be paid in the event of failing to make good her allegations. A penal bond of this nature was not unusual, and, in a state of society where the distinction between truth and falsehood was so little regarded, was perhaps a necessary check on false and calumnious charges. The majority, however, refused to impose it, and commenced the investigation. In support of the petition the ranee presented to the board a variety of accounts, from which it was made to appear that a sum exceeding nine lacs of rupees (£90,000) had been distributed among the servants of the Company. One of the items was an alleged payment to Mr. Hastings himself of 15,000 rupees (£1500). It is not uncharitable to presume that it was this item which gave the petition its zest, as the majority not only entertained it, but indicated a belief—we had almost said a hope—that it would be substantiated. Apart from all other considerations, the smallness of the sum charged might have made reasonable and impartial men suspect its accuracy. If Mr. Hastings was, as his colleagues had been pleased to assume, a wholesale dealer in corruption, was it not preposterous to believe that when £90,000 was distributed he consented to receive a paltry £1500 as his share? It is right to add that no proof was ever attempted of the charge thus frivolously made and incessantly entertained.

Another charge more directly implicating the governor-general was brought before the council on the 30th of March, 1775. A native, apparently possessed of no station or influence, presented a paper, in which he alleged that the fougedar of Hooghly, to whom the Company paid a salary of 72,000 rupees, received only 32,000, and employed the remainder in bribes to secure him in office and to cover his malpractices—Mr. Hastings regularly drawing in this way 36,000 rupees, and his native secretary 4000. The motive for making this representation was palpable on the face of the document, for it concluded with an offer to undertake the duties of the office for 32,000 rupees, which the present fougedar actually received. A document presented under such suspicious circumstances was far too flimsy to support the very grave charge which it made against the head of the government; but the majority proceeded with the same recklessness as before, and, on the most insufficient evidence, both dismissed the fougedar and found the charge proved.

On the 2d of May, 1775, Mr. Grant, one of the members as well as the accountant of the provincial council of Moorshedabad, sent to the council a set of accounts which he had received from a native who was now in his service, and had lately been a clerk in the nabob’s treasury. According to these accounts, Munny Begum, the nabob’s guardian, had received above nine lacs more than she had accounted for. On examination the clerk stated that the Begum’s head eunuch had endeavoured to bribe him, before he parted with the accounts, to deliver them up and return to the nabob’s service, and Mr. Grant declared that similar attempts had been made upon himself. These circumstances satisfied the majority of the council that the accounts were authentic, and they at once carried a resolution to suspend the Begum from her office, which was in the meantime united with that of nabob’s dewan, then held by Rajah Gourdass, Nuncomar’s son, and to despatch Mr. Goring to Moorshedabad to conduct an investigation on the spot. Mr. Goring, who owed his appointment to the majority, appears to have imbibed a portion of their spirit. The instruction given to him was to enforce delivery from the Begum of the whole of the public and private accounts for the preceding eight years, and hand them over to the provincial council, Messrs. Maxwell, Anderson, and Grant, who were to examine them minutely. He had been only a few days in Moorshedabad, when he despatched to Calcutta memorandums of disbursements of a lac and a half of rupees (£15,000) to Mr. Hastings, and of the same amount to Mr. Middleton. When the memorandums were read, Mr. Hastings wished Goring to be asked “in what manner he came by the accounts he has now sent, and on what account this partial selection was made by him.” This question, which the majority declined to put, would, it is said, have brought out the fact that he had extorted the account by intimidation, and selected the particular items with a view to the inculpation of the governor-general. But though Mr. Goring’s bias might thus have been made manifest, it does not follow that his account was inaccurate, and the important question therefore is, Were these disbursements really made? Did Mr. Hastings, when he went to Moorshedabad in 1772, and the Begum was formally installed as the nabob’s guardian, receive £15,000 from her under the name of entertainment money? It is admitted on all hands that he did. In his answer, so far from denying the receipt, he justifies it on various grounds. The act of parliament prohibiting presents was not then passed, the allowance made was in accordance with the custom of the country; it put nothing into his own pocket, and had he not received it, he must have charged an equal amount against the Company. One thing is wanting to make this defence complete. Why was the receipt of this money concealed? Why was it only brought to light at last by an investigation partaking of the nature of a criminal inquest? Mr. Hastings rendered what were understood to be full accounts of that journey, and among other heads inserted a very heavy item for the travelling charges of himself, his colleagues, and attendants. If, in addition to all this, he expended £15,000 more, the fact was surely important enough to be stated, and it is difficult to account for the omission of it on any ground but that of studied concealment. Mr. Hastings was well aware of the very unfavourable light in which presents were viewed by the directors, by parliament, and by the British public generally, and he had honourably distinguished himself by refraining from the acceptance of them at a time when Indian officials above him in rank were setting an opposite example. His conduct in the present instance is the more inexplicable. His own assertion is, that he added nothing to his own fortune by this allowance. This is probably correct. The money received was all spent, and the charge to which thereby he laid himself open, was not so much one of corruption, as of want of economy and efficient control over the disbursements of servants and dependants.

Another charge, though it preceded some of those already mentioned, has been reserved to the last, because it was attended with very remarkable circumstances, and is the only one which still possesses historical interest. On the 11th of March, 1775, Nuncomar put into the hands of Mr. Francis a letter addressed to the governor-general and council, and requested him to lay it before the board, “as a duty belonging to his office as a councillor of the state.” Mr. Francis presented the letter to the council on the same day. He could not, he said, consistently with his duty, refuse to receive it; it was given him publicly, in presence of a considerable number of persons, and the rajah’s request for its delivery had been interpreted by three different individuals. The letter entered into various details respecting the case of Mahomed Reza Khan, insinuating that he had obtained his release by bribery, and concluded with the specific charge against Mr. Hastings, of having received above three lacs and a half (354,105 rupees) for the appointments of Munny Begum and Gourdass. Mr. Francis, in presenting the letter, professed to be unacquainted with its contents, but admitted, in answer to a question by Mr. Hastings, that he did apprehend it contained some charge against him. On the 13th of March, Nuncomar transmitted through the secretary a letter, which he requested to be delivered to the governor-general and council, and opened in their presence. It contained little more than a declaration of the purity of his own motives, and a request that he might be permitted to appear before the council in support of the charges in his former letter.

Mr. Hastings had from the first protested against the course of procedure adopted by the majority in regard to charges affecting his character. He denied their competency to sit in judgment upon him, but did not object to inquiry, provided they would conduct it in a becoming manner. Instead of arraigning him as a culprit, they might appoint a committee and investigate to the utmost everything that might be laid to his charge. Unmoved by this remonstrance, Colonel Monson moved that Nuncomar should be called before the council to substantiate his charge against the governor-general. Though an indecent and monstrous motion he found no difficulty in carrying it, but not till Mr. Hastings had made a final effort to save himself from the meditated insult. “Before the question is put,” he said, “I declare that I will not suffer Nuncomar to appear before the board as my accuser. I know what belongs to the dignity and character of the first member of this administration. I will not sit at this board in the character of a criminal, nor do I acknowledge the members of this board to be my judges. I am reduced on this occasion to make the declaration that I regard General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis as my accusers.” Adverting to what Mr. Francis had said about being compelled by duty to deliver Nuncomar’s letter, he continued: “It was no part of his duty to make himself the carrier of a letter, which would have been much more properly committed to the hands of a peon or hircarrah, or delivered by the writer of it to the secretary himself. Mr. Francis, by his own acknowledgment, apprehended that the letter contained some charge against me. If the charge was false, it was a libel; it might have been false for anything Mr. Francis could know to the contrary, since he was unacquainted with the contents of it; in this instance, therefore, he incurred the hazard of presenting a libel to the board—this was not a duty belonging to his office as a councillor of state.” Mr. Hastings then finally remarked:—“The chief of this administration, your superior, gentlemen, appointed by the legislature itself, shall I sit at this board to be arraigned in the presence of a wretch whom you well know to be the basest of mankind? I believe I need not mention his name, but it is Nuncomar. Shall I sit to hear men, collected from the dregs of the people, give evidence, at his dictating, against my character and conduct? I will not. You may, if you please, form yourselves into a committee for the investigation of these matters in any way which you may think proper; but I will repeat, that I will not meet Nuncomar at this board, nor suffer Nuncomar to be examined at the board, nor have you a right to it, nor can it answer any other purpose than that of vilifying and insulting me to insist upon it.”

In the course of his speech, Mr. Hastings stated that he had expected such an attack as that now made, for he had seen a paper containing many accusations against him, and had been told that it was carried to Colonel Monson by Nuncomar, who was, moreover, employed for some hours in private, explaining to the colonel the nature of the charges. He produced a translation of the paper, and desired it to be recorded. Colonel Monson, thus unexpectedly put upon his own defence, denied that he had seen any paper in the Persian or any country language, containing any accusation against the governor-general, but he did not deny Nuncomar’s visit; and it therefore stands as an uncontradicted fact, that one at least of the trio who had constituted themselves judges of the conduct of Mr. Hastings, was closeted for hours with his accuser, listening to such representations of the charge as the accuser was pleased to lay before him. Could there be a grosser violation of judicial propriety? As soon as the motion for Nuncomar’s admission was carried, Mr. Hastings declared the council dissolved and withdrew. Mr. Barwell followed his example. The remaining three, holding that the council could be dissolved only by the consent of the majority, kept their seats. General Clavering, as the senior member, took the chair. Nuncomar being called in and asked what he had to say in support of his charges, replied: “I am not a man officially to make complaints, but when I perceived my character, which is as dear to me as life, hurt by the governor’s receiving into his presence two natives of low repute, and denying me admittance, I thought it incumbent on me to write what I have. Everything is contained in the letter I have given in.” This was very rambling, and so far as relevant, damaging only to himself, because it proved that he was actuated, not as he professed by public spirit, but by private resentment. Being called upon for other papers, he produced a letter purporting to be written to him by Munny Begum. It began by advertising to the favour conferred upon her by the appointment of guardian to the nabob, and stated that after considering what would be a proper acknowledgment, she proposed a present of one lac. The letter then proceeds thus:—“The governor answered that he had not done what he had from motives of private advantage, but for the satisfaction of his employers. I pressed the present exceedingly upon him, when he at last said, ‘Very well, if you do think proper to make a present, give two lacs as Maharajah (meaning you) engaged; otherwise, do as you please, you are your own mistress.’” The letter goes on to state that one of the lacs was paid by herself, and the other by a draft on him (Nuncomar), and concludes in the following terms: “For the future, let us take care, in the conduct of our affairs, to consult and plan beforehand, that when we are called upon, no difference may appear in our representations and answers, and that I may conform to whatever you may say; let nothing of the secret part of these transactions be known to the governor or the gentlemen of the council, or any others. The proverb is, ‘A word to the wise.’”

This letter is of very doubtful authenticity. The handwriting did not appear to be that of the Begum, as ascertained by a letter which had been received from her only a few days before; and though the seal was apparently hers, little weight was due to the fact, because it was well known that such a desperate and unprincipled intriguer as Nuncomar could have had no difficulty in either obtaining temporary possession of the real seal, or in procuring a facsimile which could not be distinguished from it. There was in the letter itself strong internal evidence of spuriousness. Its object, except for the purpose of giving plausibility to Nuncomar’s charge, is absolutely meaningless. Why should the Begum have written to him a long detail of a transaction of which, if it was a reality and not a mere fabrication, he was already perfectly cognizant? What, too, is to be thought of the conclusion in which the Begum and Nuncomar are represented as conspiring together to fabricate falsehoods and give them currency, without running any risk of detection? Where there was so much ground for suspicion, it might at least have been expected that before any effect was given to the letter, the doubts as to its genuineness would have been set at rest, by the very simple process of sending it to Moorshedabad, where the Begum was residing, and calling upon her to say whether it was or was not a forgery. The “gentlemen of the majority” were, it seems, too impatient for a decision to brook any delay; and with nothing more before them than the above suspicious document—which, even if genuine, proved nothing against any one than the writer and receiver of it—and the unsupported assertions of an informer of infamous character, they did not hesitate to resolve that the sum of three lacs forty thousand rupees (£34,000) had been received by the governor-general, and that he ought to be required to pay the amount into the treasury of the Company, to whom it of right belonged. When this resolution was intimated to Mr. Hastings, he treated it with the scorn which it deserved, and the majority were unable to do more than complete their impotent malice, by ordering that “the whole of the papers should be placed in the hands of the Company’s attorney, for the purpose of counsel’s opinion being taken as to the best mode of proceeding to recover the amount.”

Nuncomar was playing a very dangerous game without being conscious of it. Having gained the ear and been taken under the special patronage of the three councillors, in whom the whole power and influence of government now centred, he saw nothing before him but honour and emolument, to an extent which he had never before ventured to anticipate. He was soon rudely awakened from this pleasing dream. The same act which had remodelled the council had established a supreme court, possessed within its own sphere of powers still more unlimited than those of the council, and not indisposed to stretch them to the utmost, were it only for the purpose of proving its independence. Sir Elijah Impey, the chief justice of this court, had been the school-fellow, and was still the intimate friend, of Mr. Hastings, and there was therefore ground to presume that if Nuncomar could be made amenable to the supreme court, the friendship of the majority of the council would not avail him. This was a danger of which Nuncomar appears to have had no apprehension, till it actually overtook him. On the 11th of April, 1775, he was charged before the supreme court, along with two Englishmen, Joseph and Francis Fowke, with having conspired to compel a native named Camul-u-din to write a false petition, impugning the conduct of the governor-general, Mr. Barwell, Mr. Vansittart, and two others, and to sign a list of bribes alleged to have been received by them. Ultimately, the indictment stood only in the names of the governor-general and Mr. Vansittart, and after an examination, Nuncomar and Joseph Fowke were held to bail at their instance, to take their trial at the ensuing assizes. The examination, which took place on the 12th, lasted from eleven o’clock in the morning to eleven at night; and the governor-general, knowing that both he and Mr. Barwell required to be present at it, addressed a letter to General Clavering, requesting him to take the chair at the meeting of council which was fixed for that day, and proceed, along with the other members, to despatch the current business. This having been done, the three councillors addressed a letter to Mr. Hastings, in which, after mentioning what they had heard of a conspiracy, they said, that as an investigation which required the absence of the governor-general and Mr. Barwell from the council, must be of great moment, if not involving the welfare of the government, they had resolved to continue in council till apprised of the issue. Very possibly they suspected that their own conduct might be implicated, and that the conspiracy might be made partly to turn on the zeal of Mr. Francis, in delivering Nuncomar’s letter, and the secret interview which Colonel Monson had held with them. Mr. Hastings, in reply, explained the cause of his absence, and added, he was sorry the three members should have thought it necessary to remain in council, until informed of a subject and the issue of an inquiry which they would perceive had no relation to the safety of the state, nor to any circumstance that required their present attention. This ought to have satisfied them that further interference on their part was unnecessary, and would be unbecoming. The charge was about to be judicially investigated, and the duty of all, and more especially of those high in office, was to do nothing to prejudice it. What, then, must be thought of the conduct of the majority, who, the very day after Nuncomar was held to bail, publicly expressed their sympathy with him by proceeding to his house and paying him a formal visit!

What would have been the issue of the charge of conspiracy, it is now vain to conjecture. It is difficult to believe that the governor-general and Mr. Vansittart would have committed themselves to it, unless they had felt confident of obtaining a verdict; and yet it may have been only a tentative process, raised not so much with an intention of seriously carrying it out, as of trying the effect which it might have of deterring the crowd of informers and intriguers whom the proceedings in the council had called into activity. When the charge of conspiracy was brought, the majority complained of it as an obstacle to the investigations on which they had entered, and declaimed on the difficulty of finding men bold enough to risk the consequences of revealing the truth. To this Mr. Hastings indignantly replied: “To talk of persons having the courage to declare themselves against the late administration is an insult on my situation. The fact is, it requires courage in any man not to do it, it being universally believed that the surest means to obtain the friendship and support of a fixed majority of the council, who have the whole power of government in their hands, is to lodge accusations against the late administration, and to refuse is the surest means of incurring their resentment. Promises and threats have been used by the instruments of the majority, particularly by Nuncomar, to obtain accusations against me.” Dwelling on the same subject in a letter to the directors, he says, “My adversaries have placed me in a situation particularly difficult and delicate. They have made me the butt of increasing persecution for these seven months past, and have called down the whole host of informers from every quarter of Bengal against me. Yet, when I have endeavoured to bring to justice men charged with a conspiracy to ruin my fortune and blast my character with forged and libellous accusations, the same charge is retorted upon me by the gentlemen of the majority, although, in all their most violent attacks upon me, they have made professions of the deepest concern for the honour of the governor-general. This is the very wantonness of oppression; it is like putting the man to the rack, and exclaiming against him for struggling with his tormentors; while rewards are held out publicly to those who will offer themselves as my accusers.”

The majority having ventured to appeal to public opinion in support of the judgment they had formed of his conduct, Mr. Hastings accepted the challenge, and thus addressed the directors:—“It is in your power, honourable sir, to obtain that opinion. There are many men in England, of unquestionable knowledge and integrity, who have been eye-witnesses of all the transactions of this government in the short interval in which I had the direction of it. There are many hundreds in England who have correspondents in Bengal, from whom they have received successive advices of those transactions and opinions of the authors of them. I solemnly make my appeal to these concurring testimonies; and if in justice to your honourable court—by whom I was chosen for the high station which I have lately filled, by whom my conduct has been applauded, and through whom I have obtained the distinguished honour assigned me by the legislature itself, in my nomination to fill the first place in the new administration of India—I may be allowed the liberty of making so uncommon a request, I do most earnestly entreat that you will be pleased to call upon those who, from their own knowledge or the communications of others, can contribute such information, to declare severally the opinions which they have entertained of the measures of my administration, the tenor of my conduct in every department of this government, and the effects which it has produced, both in conciliating the minds of the natives to the British government, in confirming your authority over the country, and in advancing your interest in it. From these and from the testimonies of your own records, let me be judged—not from the malevolent declamations of those who, having no services of their own to plead, can only found their reputation on the destruction of mine.” This appeal, though somewhat overloaded with self-laudation, was in the main well founded; and there cannot be a doubt that, if at this time the British subjects who had been or were still resident in Bengal, and the great body of the natives, could have been polled, a vast majority would have declared in favour of Mr. Hastings and against the three councillors, who, after they had, by combining together, wrested all power from his hands, used it, not for the purpose of advancing the public interest, but for the purpose of detecting flaws and delinquencies, in the exposure of which they might gratify personal animosities. It is doubtful, however, if Mr. Hastings’ appeal to the public would have been so successful after the date of the transaction which we are now about to relate. Whether rightly or wrongly, an important share in it has been generally imputed to him, and the effect has been to cast a dark shade on his reputation.

On the 6th of May, 1775, Nuncomar was arrested, and committed to jail to stand his trial at the ensuing assizes for forgery. The charge was made by a native Calcutta merchant, of the name of Mohn Persaud; but many jumped at once to the conclusion, that whatever the technical form might be, Mr. Hastings was the real prosecutor. Only three weeks before he had come forward avowedly in this character, and it was believed that the change of the charge from conspiracy to forgery had only been made because it might be more easily proved and involved a heavier penalty. The majority of the council, with their usual forwardness and indiscretion, were the first to give open expression to this opinion; and only three days after his committal, having deposed Munny Begum from her office of guardian to the nabob, gave him the strongest pledge of their determination not to abandon him by conferring the vacant office on his son. Looking to them as his patrons, Nuncomar complained to the council that he could not in the jail perform his ablutions and take food without loss of caste, and prayed to be removed. When the point was debated General Clavering said that the judges were probably ignorant how much a close confinement might endanger the life of the rajah, which was of so much importance to the public for proving an act of venality against the governor-general, and the usual majority resolved that the sheriff or his deputy should wait on the chief-justice, on the part of the board, and desire that he would consider of granting the prisoner relief. Mr. Hastings dissented, on the ground that the representation might be made by the prisoner himself, and that it would be improper to convey it to the chief-justice through the authority of government. In principle he was correct, but most persons will be inclined to think that, considering the position in which he stood with regard to the parties, he would have shown better taste by remaining silent.

Before the message of the council was delivered, Sir Elijah Impey had heard of the ground of complaint, and besides giving orders to make his confinement as easy as possible, had employed pundits to inspect the part of the prison assigned to Nuncomar. Their opinion being that, by performing his ablutions and taking food, he would only be obliged to perform penance without losing caste, no change was made. On the subject of the message, Sir Elijah in his answer took rather lofty ground, and concluded by requesting that, should the maharajah have any other application to make for relief, he would address himself immediately to the judges, since, by continuing to address the council, that which could only be obtained from principles of justice might have the appearance of being obtained by the means of influence and authority, the peculiar turn of mind of the natives being to expect everything from power and nothing from justice. The majority deemed it necessary to explain and justify the course they had adopted with regard to the petition, by intimating that they considered the natives of India as the immediate objects of their care and protection. On this Sir Elijah observed that the bounds between the authority of the supreme court and the council were of too delicate a nature to be discussed, unless there should be an absolute necessity to determine them. He did not question the authority of the board to receive petitions generally, or the rajah’s petition in particular, but thought that application by a prisoner for relief should be made directly to the judges. This opinion he supported by adding, “It is not sufficient that courts of justice act independently; it is necessary for the good government of a country that they should be believed, and known to be above all influence.” The maxim is excellent, but sounds rather strangely in the mouth of Sir Elijah Impey, who is greatly belied if he did not, both on this occasion and during his whole career, act in total disregard of it.

The forgery with which Nuncomar was charged was alleged to have been committed in 1770, and had become the subject of judicial proceedings in the court of dewannee adawlut. The judge of this court, whether as a preliminary step or by way of sentence does not exactly appear, had put Nuncomar in prison. Singularly enough he was indebted for his release to Mr. Hastings, who probably at this time required his services in the investigation of the charges against Mahomed Reza Khan, and who, in setting him at liberty for such a purpose, appears to have arbitrarily and unwarrantably interfered with the regular course of justice. The process had thus been suspended, and the document said to be forged had been deposited in the mayor’s court at Calcutta. By section 19 of the Regulating Act the mayor’s court was declared to be abolished as soon as the supreme court should be established; and by section 20, “all the records, muniments, and proceedings whatsoever of, or belonging to, the said mayor’s court,” were ordered to be “delivered over, preserved, and deposited for safe custody in the said new court of judicature, to which all parties shall and may resort and have recourse, upon application to the said court.” The supreme court sat for the first time in October, 1774, and could not well have taken any steps in the criminal process against Nuncomar till May, 1775, when proceedings again commenced. How a process which was originally raised in the dewannee adawlut came to be transferred to the mayor’s court is not distinctly explained. The former court tried civil actions only, and the transference to the latter court may have taken place when the forgery, which had previously been made the ground of a civil action only, was to be tried as a crime. But in whatever way the action may have been brought into the mayor’s court, it must be admitted that little time had been lost, and that its removal into the supreme court followed in regular course as an act of ordinary routine. This view, apparently unimportant in itself, is zealously contended for by the friends of Mr. Hastings, because it seems to prove that the charge of forgery against Nuncomar and his charges against the governor-general had no connection with each other,—that they were brought at the same time was, though a remarkable, and in some respects an unfortunate, only an accidental coincidence, and therefore all the insinuations which were so lavishly thrown out for the purpose of connecting Mr. Hastings with the criminal charge against Nuncomar were groundless. That charge would, in the natural course of law, have been made at the very time when it was made, though Nuncomar had never become a willing tool in the hands of Messrs. Clavering, Monson, and Francis.

There is much plausibility in the above argument; and in the absence of direct proof to the contrary, we seem bound, at least in the judgment of charity, to hold that, however much Mr. Hastings may have benefited by the criminal charge brought against Nuncomar, he had no direct hand either in originating or reviving it. So far he is entitled to be relieved from the load of obloquy which the prevalence of a contrary belief has laid upon him. With regard to the utterance proceedings, and the remorseless manner in which what is called “the law” was permitted to take its course, his exoneration will, we fear, be more difficult.

That Nuncomar was guilty of the crime laid to his charge cannot be doubted. The notorious villainies of his previous life afford presumptive evidence of his guilt, and the verdict which found it proven was given by the respectable jury of British subjects, whose sense of justice and regard for them on the whole, would not allow them to be guided in their decision by anything but the evidence which was laid before them. But even after the guilt is assumed, a number of important points remain to be considered. First of all, had the supreme court of Calcutta any right to put Nuncomar upon his trial? The court was established by charter from the crown; but the Regulating Act, in empowering his majesty to grant this charter, distinctly defines the extent of jurisdiction which it was to confer. By section 14 it is enacted that “the jurisdictive powers and authorities” of the supreme court “shall and may extend to all British subjects who shall reside in the kingdoms or provinces of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, or any of them under the protection of the said united Company,” and that it shall have full power and authority to hear and determine all complaints against any of his majesty’s subjects for any crimes, misdemeanours, or oppressions committed, or to be committed; and also, to entertain, hear, or determine any suits or actions whatsoever against any of his majesty’s subjects in Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, and any suit, action, or complaint against any person who shall, at the time when such debt, or cause of action or complaint, shall have risen, have been employed by, or shall then have been, directly or indirectly, in the service of the said united Company, or of any of his majesty’s subjects. By section 16 the supreme court is empowered to “determine any suits or actions whatsoever of any of his majesty’s subjects against any inhabitant of India, residing in any of the said kingdoms or provinces of Bengal, Behar, or Orissa, or any of them, upon any contract or agreement in writing entered into by any of the said inhabitants with any of his majesty’s subjects, when the cause of action shall exceed the sum of five hundred current rupees;” but the power thus given is expressly restricted, by the words which immediately follow, to the particular instance in which “the said inhabitant shall have agreed in the said contract, that, in case of dispute, the matter shall be heard and determined in the said supreme court.”

These are the only sections of the act which define the jurisdiction of the supreme court, and it is perfectly clear from them that the only “crimes, misdemeanours, or oppressions” which it was empowered to try were those committed by “any of his majesty’s subjects,” and that a native inhabitant was amenable to its jurisdiction only in two cases expressly specified—the one where he was directly or indirectly employed in the service of the Company or of any of his majesty’s subjects at the time when the “debt, or cause of action or complaint,” on which he was sued had arisen; and the other, where the cause of action exceeded 500 rupees, and where, in a written contract with any of his majesty’s subjects, a native inhabitant had agreed that, in case of dispute, the supreme court should decide. The only other clauses of the act which have any bearing on the point occur in the 13th section, where it is enacted that the supreme court “shall be a court of oyer and terminer and jail-delivery, in and for the said town of Calcutta and factory of Fort William, in Bengal aforesaid, and the limits thereof, and the factories subordinate thereto;” and the 34th section, which enacted, “that all offences and misdemeanours which shall be laid, tried, and inquired of in the said supreme court, shall be tried by a jury of British subjects resident in the town of Calcutta, and not otherwise.” These clauses, taken in connection with the above sections which define the jurisdiction of the court, furnish additional evidence that it had no right whatever to put natives upon their trial. A court of oyer and terminer and jail-delivery was undoubtedly competent to try crimes—but where? “In the said town of Calcutta and factory of Fort William, in Bengal aforesaid, and the factories subordinate thereto.” The town of Calcutta is here mentioned in connection with the different factories of the Company, and the fair meaning obviously is, that all his majesty’s subjects within these limits are amenable to the supreme court. The crimes and misdemeanours to be inquired into were exclusively those with which any of them might be charged; and hence, in order that they might not be placed in a worse position than at home, it is provided, as we have seen, in section 34, that they shall be tried by a jury of British subjects. Had the act, in using the words “town of Calcutta,” meant to include not merely the British subjects, but all the men, women, and children, of every kind and degree, who might be resident within its limits, it must have meant to neutralize and contradict its express enactments in regard to jurisdiction, and must, moreover, have meant to commit a great injustice, totally abhorrent from the spirit of English jurisprudence, by denying to the natives the privilege of being tried by a jury of their own countrymen. If it had really been intended to make them amenable to the supreme court, could anything have been more preposterous than the enactment that all crimes and misdemeanours should be tried by “a jury of British subjects resident in Calcutta, and not otherwise?”

Though nothing could be more preposterous than to interpret the words “town” of Calcutta in such a way as to include the native inhabitants, and thereby, instead of giving effect to the Regulating Act, to contradict and prevent it, it was only by such a stretch of interpretation that the judges of the supreme court found themselves competent to try Nuncomar. It is true, indeed, that they endeavoured to derive some countenance from the practice of the mayor’s court, which, by a similar forced interpretation of a clause in their charter, granted by George II. in 1753, had usurped criminal jurisdiction over the native inhabitants of Calcutta. It is of importance, however, to observe, that the mayor’s court, as if conscious that its claim of criminal jurisdiction over the natives could not be legally sustained, had used it sparingly, never venturing to execute sentence without the consent of the government, and that in the only case in which it condemned a native for forgery, he received a pardon. Besides, it is very doubtful if the supreme court had any right to avail itself of any precedent furnished by the mayor’s court. The Regulating Act did not transfer the powers of the mayor’s court to the supreme court. On the contrary, it enacted that the part of the charter of George II. relating to the establishment of the mayor’s court, “or to the civil, criminal, or ecclesiastical jurisdiction thereof,” should “cease, determine, and be absolutely void to all intents and purposes;” and merely directed that “all the records, muniments, and proceedings whatsoever” belonging to the mayor’s court should be “delivered over, preserved, and deposited for safe custody in the said new court of judicature.” It has been said that the crown charter, by which the supreme court was actually established, went further in this respect than the Regulating Act, and provided expressly that no “indictment, information, action, suit, cause, or proceeding depending” in the mayor’s court “shall be abated or annihilated, but the same shall be transferred, in their then present condition respectively to, and subsist and depend in the said supreme court of judicature at Fort William, to all intents and purposes as if they had been respectively commenced in the last-mentioned court.” The answer to this is, that whatever the crown may have seemed to do, it could not legally give one particle of jurisdiction more than the legislature had empowered it to grant; and that, therefore, till a clause can be produced from the Regulating Act entitling the supreme court to take cognizance of causes to which natives only were parties, and try natives criminally by a law declared to be intended for British subjects only, we must hold that Nuncomar was not tried legally.

In sustaining their competency, all the judges of the court were equally in fault; but in the mode of conducting the trial, Sir Elijah Impey earned for himself a bad pre-eminence. It was evident, from the spirit which he displayed, that he had set his heart on a conviction, and that if he obtained it, the prisoner’s doom was sealed. The crime of forgery was, as the chief-justice well knew, regarded with lenity by both Mahometan and Hindoo codes; and therefore, when, by a stretch of the English law, a native found guilty of this crime was sentenced to an ignominious death, there could not be a clearer case for the exercise of mercy. The crime had been committed years ago by a native, who, in common with his countrymen, regarded forgery as, at the worst, only an aggravated species of falsehood; and to convert it into a capital crime, because it was held capital by a law of which he knew nothing, and by which he was not bound, was a gross violation of the plainest dictates of reason and justice. Even if the conviction could be technically sustained, it was only by asserting law at the expense of humanity. These considerations weighed so little with Sir Elijah Impey that he even rebuked Nuncomar’s counsel in open court, because he had urged the foreman of the jury who tried the cause to join in an application for a respite. By a special clause in the charter, the supreme court was empowered “to reprieve and suspend the execution of any capital sentence, wherever there shall appear, in their judgment, a proper occasion for mercy,” till the pleasure of the crown should be known. Another clause provided that “in all indictments, informations, and criminal suits and causes whatsoever,” the supreme court should have “full and absolute power and authority to allow or deny the appeal of the party pretending to be aggrieved” to the privy council; and it was confidently expected that under these clauses the execution of the sentence of death which had been recorded would be deferred, and the sentence itself ultimately reversed. It is at this stage of the transaction that the conduct of Mr. Hastings appears in its most questionable light.

Sir Elijah Impey was universally believed to have conducted the trial more in the spirit of a partizan than of a judge. He thought his friend Mr. Hastings ill used, and gladly embraced the opportunity of coming to his relief. Informers and accusers were pouring in from all quarters, encouraged by the countenance which the majority of the council so lavishly bestowed upon them, and he was willing to teach them, by a lesson not likely to be soon forgotten, that the protection of the majority of the council might fail them when they stood most in want of it. Assuming that the chief-justice was actuated by the motives generally imputed to him, it is plain that nothing could have so effectually arrested him in the course he was bent on pursuing as a word of disapprobation from Mr. Hastings. He could not but be aware that in lending unscrupulous aid to his friend, he was placing himself in a position from which he might not be able afterwards to escape without some loss of character, or, it might be, incurring personal danger; and therefore, had that friend, who was probably in frequent communication with him during the whole course of the proceedings, only hinted that his zeal was outrunning his discretion, can there be a doubt that he would at once have found some plausible reason for stopping short? Mr. Hastings, strong in his integrity, might, for instance, have represented that as all the charges against him were groundless, the most effectual mode of proving their falsehood was to allow them to be thoroughly investigated; and that, on the contrary, the removal of Nuncomar, the leading witness against him, would make it impossible for him ever to establish his innocence—that the public, aware of their mutual friendship, would conclude they were acting in concert, and not be persuaded, however strong their protestations to the contrary might be, that Mr. Hastings had not murdered Nuncomar by the hands of Sir Elijah Impey—and that, therefore, while the conviction which had been obtained would, doubtless, have a salutary effect by deterring those who were about to volunteer new charges, the wisest policy would be to defer the execution of the sentence, at least till its very questionable legality could be fully tested, and the pleasure of the crown could be known. Sir Elijah Impey never would have been so quixotic as to force his own plan of relief on Mr. Hastings in the face of such a representation. But if this, or a similar representation, would have saved Nuncomar’s life, the question returns—Why was it not made? Mr. Hastings might have interfered with effect. He did not; and the conclusion is forced upon us that he did not, because he had satisfied himself that, all things considered, his interest would be best secured by allowing the law to take its course. In adopting this resolution, he may have been partly influenced by the wish to escape from the annoyance of false charges, but no degree of charity will enable us to believe, that he was not still more influenced by a desire to prevent disclosures which might be made, and which could not be made without serious damage to his reputation.

All efforts to stay the execution of the sentence having proved unavailing, Nuncomar prepared for his fate with a calmness worthy of a better man. The stoicism which existed only in theory among the Greeks, has been reduced to practice by the Hindoos. So long as there seems an escape from danger, they have no courage to face it, and are not ashamed to display despicable cowardice; but when convinced that the inevitable hour is come, they often seem as if a new soul had been breathed into them, and view death in its most terrific forms with an apparent unconcern, which, if it be not apathy, is heroism. Such was the spirit which Nuncomar now displayed. On the eve of the execution, after taking final leave of his friends, he sat down to write notes and examine accounts, as if engaged in ordinary business. In the morning, when the hour for quitting the prison arrived, he walked with a firm step to the palanquin, took his seat in it, and in being carried along through the immense concourse, looked around with unruffled serenity. He had previously sent a message to Messrs. Clavering, Monson, and Francis, requesting their protection to his son Gourdass, and on arriving at the scaffold, desired again to be remembered to them. He then mounted the scaffold, and seemed the only person unmoved amid the myriads who surrounded him. These consisted of two great classes, who viewed the spectacle with very different feelings. The Mussulmans hated Nuncomar for the active part he had taken in the proceedings against Mahomed Reza Khan, and thought he was only about to suffer a just retribution. The Hindoos were filled with amazement, grief, and terror. A Brahmin, the very head of the caste in Bengal, about to suffer an ignominious death by legal sentence, for an offence which seemed to them too trivial to rank as a crime! A punishment so much at variance with their ideas of right and wrong would never be inflicted. They clung to this hope to the very last, and even when the apparatus of death was before their eyes, perhaps under some undefined impression that the gods themselves would interfere to save the life of a Brahmin, and vindicate the honour of his order. When at last the signal was given and the fatal bolt was drawn, they gave utterance to their horror in wild shrieks, and turning their backs on the spot as if it were pollution to look upon it, had in a few minutes left it almost deserted. From a comparison of dates it appears, that a few hours after this judicial murder was perpetrated, Mr. Hastings was seated at his desk penning a letter to Dr. Samuel Johnson, on such topics as the tour in the Hebrides and the arts and productions of India.

Believing that Mr. Hastings might have prevented this horrid tragedy by a word, and yet did not choose to utter it, we have already inferred that he had carefully weighed the matter and satisfied himself that he would gain more by Nuncomar’s death than by interfering to save his life. If this was his calculation, the immediate result certainly seemed to prove its accuracy. The herd of native informers at once disappeared. This was doubtless an unspeakable relief, and yet it would not be difficult to show that he purchased it at too dear a rate. The majority of the council had, by the bitterness of their language, and the violence of their proceedings, put themselves decidedly in the wrong. Had they been allowed to continue their reckless course while he stood calmly on the defensive, their ignorance, rashness, and malignity must soon have betrayed them into serious blunders, and produced even at home a strong reaction in his favour. But when it came to be known, or at least generally believed, that for the purpose of stifling inquiry he had allowed a judicial murder to be committed, it was no longer possible for him to attract any share of public sympathy. Everything he said or did was construed in the worst possible sense; and when at last the whole of his Indian administration was brought under review, even those on whose aid he had most confidently calculated, chose to desert him rather than risk the loss of popularity by making common cause with him. In calculating the gain and loss of Mr. Hastings through Nuncomar’s execution, if we place on the former side the silence which it imposed on herds of native informers, we must place on the latter side the general suspicion which it brought on all his proceedings, and which ultimately subjected him to all the anxiety and ruinous expense of a public impeachment. When the two sides of the account are thus stated, there is no difficulty in ascertaining where the balance will be found. On the one side, we see only relief from an annoyance which, however galling at the time, could not have been permanent; on the other, we see a sullied reputation and years of agony endured in repelling charges far more serious than native informers, however unscrupulous, would have ventured to suggest.

Shortly after Nuncomar had brought his first charges against Mr. Hastings, the majority of the council thought it desirable to examine Cantoo Baboo, the banyan of the latter, and summoned him to appear for that purpose. Mr. Hastings, on grounds which are not explained, and could not have been sufficient, prevented him from attending; and on a subsequent day, a motion was made and carried that Cantoo Baboo was contumacious. On a new summons, after having been threatened with the stocks, he made his appearance, and a very questionable transaction was disclosed. Under the revenue system adopted in 1772, one of the regulations was as follows:—“That no peshear, banyan, or other servant, of whatever denomination, of the collector, or relation, or dependant of any such servant, be allowed to farm lands, nor directly or indirectly to hold a concern in any farm, nor to be security for any farmer; and if it shall appear that the collector shall have countenanced, approved, or connived at a breach of this regulation, he shall stand ipso facto dismissed from his collectorship.” The government intimated their sense of the greatness of the abuse which the regulation was intended to prevent, not only by the severity of the penalty, but by adding a commentary in the following terms:—“If the collector, or any persons who partake of his authority, are permitted to be farmers of the country, no other persons will dare to be their competitors. Of course they will obtain the farms on their own terms. It is not fit that the servants of the Company should be dealers with their masters. The collectors are checks on the farmers. If they themselves turn farmers, what checks can be found for them? What security will the Company have for their property? or where are the ryots to look for protection?” This reasoning is unanswerable, and goes much deeper than the regulation, which applies the prohibition only to collectors and their servants or dependants; whereas the principle on which it proceeds made it applicable to all other officials, whose power and influence might in like manner have been abused. Looking to the spirit, and not merely to the letter of the regulation, every individual high in office in the Company ought not only to have abstained personally, but also prohibited his dependants from being concerned, directly or indirectly, with the farming of lands. Above all persons, the head of the government ought to have been strictly observant of this rule; and it is therefore not without some degree of surprise and indignation that we learn that, in the year 1773, this Cantoo Baboo had managed, during the wholesale auction of that year, to obtain leases for five years, of no less than nineteen pergunnahs or districts, at an aggregate rent, commencing at 1,333,664 rupees, and gradually rising to 1,411,885 (£114,188, 10s.) In defence of this monster monopolist, Mr. Hastings could only say that he was not expressly struck at by the regulation, and that little or no profit was made. For himself, though he could not disclaim a knowledge of the transaction, he solemnly declared that he had no personal interest in it. The directors, when appealed to on the subject, expressed their decided disapprobation of the conduct of the late Bengal administration, in allowing Cantoo Baboo to hold lands; the majority of the council went, as usual, farther than the facts warranted, and made the sweeping declaration, that “in the late proceedings of the revenue board there is no species of peculiarity from which the honourable governor-general has thought it right to abstain.”

It is now high time to turn from the personal squabbles of the Calcutta council chamber, to matters of more public interest. Sujah Dowlah, the nabob vizier, returned from Rohilcund in the middle of December, 1774, in a state which made him incapable of deriving any pleasure from his late unwarrantable conquest. His health, become so indifferent as to confine him wholly to his private apartment, continued rapidly to decline, and he died on 26th of January, 1775. He was succeeded by his eldest legitimate son, under the title of Asoff-ul-Dowlah. On these events the majority of the council started a very strange doctrine. They held that the treaty with the late nabob expired at his death, and that they were therefore entitled to negotiate with the new nabob on the principle that all former arrangements had ceased to be binding. Where they had learned this novel dogma of international law does not appear, but it may be presumed that they were strongly confirmed in the belief of it by a perception of the profitable uses to which it might be applied. In one sense, as a very heavy debt was owing to the Company, it might have appeared that in the application of the doctrine the new nabob would have the advantage. If he was not to have the benefit of the treaties made with his father, neither could he be obliged to bear the burdens imposed by them. All the lacs owing to the Company by the late vizier would thus be wiped off by an application of the sponge. This was doubtless a logical inference; but it soon appeared that the gentlemen of the majority, who had started the dogma, had also determined on the mode of applying it. They were the stronger party, and knowing their strength, had resolved on dictating their own terms. These were, that all the sums of money due to the Company by the late nabob were to be fully, faithfully, and expeditiously discharged; that the purchase of Corah and Allahabad, for which fifty lacs had been paid or promised, should be ratified, but only on condition that, over and above the purchase money, the Company should receive a free grant of the territory of Benares, held under Oude by the Rajah Cheyt Sing as zemindar, and yielding a revenue of 2,210,000 rupees (£221,000); and that the monthly pay of the Company’s brigade in Oude should be raised from 210,000 to 260,000; in other words, that the pay should be increased half a lac monthly, or at the rate of £120,000 per annum. There is no wonder that Asoff-ul-Dowlah evinced what Auber is pleased to call “the most fluctuating disposition,” and did not consent to sign the new treaty till he found that delay and resistance would be equally unavailing. The negotiator of this treaty was Mr. Bristow, whom the majority of the council had substituted for Mr. Middleton as resident of Oude; but the whole merit of it was claimed by, and was unquestionably due to Messrs. Clavering, Monson, and Francis, who say in their letter to the directors, “The measure is strictly and exclusively ours; the original plan was opposed in every step by the governor general and Mr. Barwell.” This was strictly true, for Mr. Hastings had not only denounced the plan when it was proposed, but lodged a minute, in which he declared it alike dishonourable and impolitic to extort from a young prince “concessions inconsistent with our former treaties, to which the necessity of his situation alone obliged him, however unwilling, to submit.” It is curious to observe the different lights in which this transaction is viewed by the same parties, according as they themselves are affected by it. The injustice displayed in the Rohilla war was an abomination on which the majority of the council were never tired of declaiming; and yet, no sooner is an act of injustice in their power, than they hasten to perpetrate it. Why? In the one case they were gratifying personal resentment; in the other they believed they were ingratiating themselves with their employers. The conclusion is, that in neither case were they actuated by any honourable motive.

Great importance had all along been attached to the alliance with Oude, which was represented as forming an effectual barrier between the Mahrattas and the territories of the Company. This was one of the main grounds on which it was attempted to justify the Rohilla war. Only, it was said, give the nabob the Ganges for his frontier, and Bengal will be secure. While it was thus assumed that the nabob was able not only to protect himself, but to shield the Company from foreign aggression, his internal administration was so miserably conducted as to be verging on anarchy. Matters were not improved on the accession of Asoff-ul-Dowlah. Suspecting the fidelity of Buxheer Khan, who commanded in Rohilcund, he took the remedy to which despotism not unfrequently resorts, and gave orders for his assassination. Buxheer Khan made a narrow escape across the river to Agra, where Shah Alum’s general, Nujeef Khan, took him into his service. Shortly after, two chiefs, to whom the late nabob had intrusted his conquests in the Doab, threw off their allegiance, and declared themselves independent. These events, and other disturbances, occasioned by the ambition of Murteza Khan, the prime minister, to whom Asoff-ul-Dowlah had entirely resigned himself, induced the council to interfere through Mr. Bristow, who brought the subject before the nabob, and also insisted on the more regular payment of the subsidy, which had fallen heavily into arrear. As the only available source of supply, the nabob applied to his mother, Baboo Begum, who at his father’s death had come into possession of his whole treasure. By entreaty, which, as Mr. Bristow and many of the leading men at court joined in it, must have partaken of the nature of a demand, she gave him in money a sum of thirty lacs, and a release for a sum of twenty-six lacs previously received, on his engaging, by a regular agreement, which the Company’s resident ratified, not to molest her again for money.

To provide an efficient force, available both for defence and for maintaining tranquillity, the nabob was induced, at the same time when the above arrangements were made, to place his troops under European officers. This new mode of disciplining the army was giving great promise, when a new commotion broke out. The nabob had disbanded a body of matchlock men while their pay was five months in arrear. When they demanded it they were told to wait fifteen days. This they considered a mere evasion, and 4000 of them set out for the nabob’s camp, then in the Doab, at Etawah, on the banks of the Jumna. He went out to meet them in person, but having failed to pacify them, determined to put them down by force. For this purpose he ordered 15,000 of his sepoys to be drawn out. Mr. Bristow remonstrated against this proceeding, but in vain; and ultimately a regular engagement took place, and of 2500 matchlock men who stood their ground, 600 were killed and many wounded. This new way of paying arrears was rather costly, for 300 of the sepoys fell. After the mutiny had been thus quelled, Asoff-ul-Dowlah spent whole days in dissipation, not only drinking to excess, but amusing himself with making all about him beastly drunk. Such was the ally from whom the Company had been taught to expect so much.

While the nabob was at Etawah, his ambition was gratified by obtaining from Shah Alum the office of vizier of the empire, which had been held by his father. He had, of course, paid for it with a present, which the emperor’s necessities would make most welcome, and which, in all probability, far exceeded its real value, as it had become a mere empty title. The new dignity, at all events, did not improve the position of the nabob or the manners of his court. Intrigues and dissensions everywhere prevailed. Murteza Khan, the favourite minister, behaved with arrogance, and was cordially hated as an upstart by older servants. At the head of the malcontents was Kojah Bussunt, a eunuch, who had distinguished himself by military talents, and stood at the head of the army. So violent was the mutual animosity between the eunuch and the minister, that they had come to high words in the nabob’s presence. An apparent reconciliation had, however, been effected, and in token of it the eunuch invited the minister to an entertainment. After they had both drank to excess, Kojah Bussunt retired on pretence of sickness, and a number of assassins rushing in, assassinated Murteza Khan. The eunuch, pretending not to be privy to the atrocity, immediately waited on the nabob to clear himself. The nabob at once taxed him with the murder, and avenged it by ordering him to be beheaded. Saadut Ali, the nabob’s brother, probably because he was implicated, and because he had been denied admittance at court, suspected his own life to be in danger, and insured his safety by mounting his horse and fleeing with precipitation to Nujeef Khan. The nabob thus in one day lost his minister and his general, and was abandoned by his brother. These sudden changes did not tend to improve his affairs, and he started off from Etawah for Lucknow. The army, left in a manner without a head, and grumbling at the irregularity and shortness of their pay, were ready to avail themselves of any pretext to break out into mutiny. Jealousy of the command given to British officers furnished the first example; and several of the battalions under their charge, though at a distance from each other, commenced, as if by preconcerted signal, to set them at defiance. With difficulty some of the officers made their escape, and others succeeded in recovering their authority; and at last, by coercive measures, to which two of the Company’s battalions lent their aid, the mutinous troops were reduced or dispersed.

There was still one general of whom the nabob had strong suspicions. This was Mahboob Ali Khan, whom he had formerly intrusted with the command of the district of Corah. In consequence partly of the suspicion entertained, the nabob applied for two of the Company’s battalions to occupy that district. They were accordingly sent, under the command of Colonel Parker, who seems to have possessed more zeal than judgment. Instead of waiting for proof which might have confirmed the suspicion, or, it may be, proved it groundless, he began with the rash step of disarming Mahboob’s officers. His next proceeding was very eccentric. When he was approaching Mahboob’s troops they received him with a salute of twenty-one guns. Ostensibly this was meant as an honour; but he interpreted it into an act of defiance, and demanded, in the nabob’s name, the surrender of the guns. No sooner was this refused than he ordered his men to the attack, and, after an affair of ten minutes, routed Mahboob’s troops and took possession of their whole park of artillery. These unfortunate proceedings looked like the commencement of a civil war, and threw the nabob into great perplexity, which he is said to have evinced at one time by denouncing Mahboob as a traitor, and thanking Colonel Parker for his service, and at another time by allowing Mahboob to appear at court, and bestowing upon him some marks of favour. The Bengal council appear to have been also thrown into some degree of perplexity. It had now become apparent that Oude was more likely to prove an incumbrance than a valuable ally; and even Mr. Hastings must have had some misgivings as to his treaty of Benares. He had removed the Rohillas, whose military prowess and love of freedom would have made them powerful auxiliaries in repelling the Mahrattas, who were aiming at their destruction; and he had substituted for them a government so torn by intestine dissensions as to be utterly incapable of making head against a foreign aggressor. The conclusion, however painful and humiliating, must almost have been forced upon him, that he had mistaken the true interest of the Company, and, in agreeing to the treaty of Benares, not only done an act of injustice, but committed a political blunder.

Shortly after the proclamation of the new government in Bengal, the governor-general and council communicated with the other two presidencies, calling their attention to the subordinate position in which they had been placed by the Regulating Act, and requiring them to furnish information in regard to the various topics on which the Bengal council, as supreme, might require to offer advice or give judgment. The councils of both presidencies lost no time in framing reports and transmitting them to Calcutta. In that from Madras the proceedings which had terminated in the deposition of the Rajah of Tanjore, and in that from Bombay the relations which had been formed with Ragobah, were the subjects brought most prominently forward. To these, therefore, it will now be proper to return.

The city of Tanjore, it will be remembered, was taken by assault on the 17th of September, 1773, and was immediately, with the whole of the rajah’s territories, put into possession of the Nabob of Arcot. This transaction was in direct violation of the treaty of 1762, by which the integrity of the rajah’s territories was guaranteed to him by the Company. The obligations of this treaty had been extinguished by a flimsy device concerted by the nabob, and connived at, if not directly sanctioned, by the Madras council; and hence the directors, so far from approving of the measures by which the rajah had been made a prisoner and dethroned, expressed their displeasure in the strongest manner, by reprimanding the members of council, removing Mr. Wynch, the governor, and sending out Lord Pigot, not only to succeed him, but to replace the rajah on the musnud. Lord Pigot was not new to the office conferred upon him. He was the same individual as the Mr. Pigot who was governor of Madras during the eventful period when the campaigns of Coote and Lally were deciding the question of British or French ascendency in India. He had returned to England in 1763, with a large fortune, said to have been mainly accumulated by lending money to native rulers; and he had managed to employ part of it in such a way as to procure for himself an Irish peerage. His re-appointment as governor was not obtained without a struggle. The directors decided by a small majority in favour of Mr. Rumbold, but the general court reversed their decision, and gave the preference to Lord Pigot; and as one great object in the appointment was to secure the restoration of the rajah, there could not be a better choice. The treaty of 1762 had been concluded under his auspices; he plumed himself upon it, and must have been delighted with the opportunity of giving effect to it after it was to all appearance extinguished for ever.

Lord Pigot took his seat as governor of Madras on the 11th of December, 1775. On the subject of the restoration of the rajah, the instructions of the directors were that he was to be reinstated in his territories as they existed in 1762. Some important conditions were, however, to be added to the treaty of that year. The rajah was to be taken bound to allow Tanjore to be garrisoned by Company’s troops, and assign lands for their maintenance; to pay the nabob’s tribute, and assist him with such troops as the Company should concur with him in requiring; and to form no treaty with foreign powers without the Company’s sanction, nor give any assistance to their enemies. The rajah, now a prisoner, was only too glad to submit to any stipulations that were to procure him his liberty and re-establish him in his territories; but the nabob, of course, felt very differently. Tanjore, which he had so long coveted, was now in his possession, and he could not consent to see it again wrested from him. Knowing how decided his opposition would be, the Madras council, on being made acquainted with the instructions of the directors, determined to use the utmost delicacy in communicating them to him, and Lord Pigot held several interviews with him, for the purpose of breaking the subject gradually. It was impossible, however, to reconcile him to a measure which undid what had been one of the main objects of his life; and except force, which he knew would be utterly unavailing, there was no kind of obstacle which he did not try to interpose. Tanjore, he said, belonged to him of right, and had even been so recognized by the King of England himself, who, in a letter delivered by his plenipotentiary, congratulated him on the success of an expedition which he had made against it; the rajah had at all events forfeited his right by presuming to alienate part of his territories without consent, and holding treasonable correspondence with the Company’s enemies, whereas he had ever been a faithful ally. “I have been long a friend of the Company,” he exclaimed; “I have placed my life and honour, and those of my children, in their hands, by fixing my residence at Madras; my father’s life was sacrificed for them; my riches have been expended in their service; and I now beg from their friendship that they will have pity upon an old man’s gray hairs.” “This appeal,” says Auber, “was calculated to interest the most indifferent person in wishing that the claims of the nabob should be acknowledged;” and it is therefore not out of place to mention, that not many months before the appeal was made, this faithful friend, who had grown gray in serving the Company, had been entertaining the ambassadors of Hyder with a glowing description of “the delight with which they should hereafter mutually view, from the terrace on which they were then seated, the expulsion of the last infidel Englishman over the surf which foamed at their feet.”

When the appeal proved unavailing, the nabob used an argument which, as it affected the interest of some of the members of council, might perhaps have been more successful if the instructions had been less peremptory. How, he asked, could he be expected to pay the English creditors, to whom he was so largely indebted, if the revenues of Tanjore, forming a main branch of their security, were taken from him? His last plea was delay. There must be some mistake in the matter. The directors must have been imposed upon by false reports. His representation of the true state of the case would undeceive them; and therefore, in justice to all parties, no final step ought to be taken without giving the directors another opportunity of revising their decision. These pretexts, how much soever they may have influenced the other members of council, had no weight with Lord Pigot, who lost no time in preparing for the immediate restoration of the rajah. The crop was at this time on the ground, and it was of importance that it should be reaped for his benefit. The first step taken was to garrison Tanjore with a body of the Company’s troops, under command of Colonel Harper. Sir Robert Fletcher, who had again become commander-in-chief at Madras, thought the restoration of the rajah belonged of right to his office, and was much disappointed when Lord Pigot claimed this honour for himself, and was invested by the council with full powers for that purpose. Instead of urging his own claim, however, he appears to have contented himself with proposing that two other members of council should accompany his lordship, as a check upon his proceedings. The board, he argued, were not justified in delegating unlimited powers, and by doing so in the present case, while there was no extreme necessity to justify it, were furnishing a precedent by which individuals might serve their own corrupt interests at the expense of the public. His opposition was not effectual, but the spirit which dictated it remained, and was destined not to be long dormant.

On the 8th of April, 1776, Lord Pigot arrived at Tanjore, and on the 11th the restoration of the rajah was proclaimed. The feelings of the prince when thus raised from a prison to re-occupy his throne, were vividly expressed in an address, in which he said, “Had I a thousand tongues I could not express my gratitude.” As may be supposed, he readily agreed to every concession that was asked of him. Besides receiving a garrison into his capital, he placed the whole country under the protection of the Company’s troops, and instead of an assignment of lands for the expense, undertook to defray it by the annual payment of a lump sum of four lacs of pagodas (about £160,000). On the 5th of May, when Lord Pigot returned to Madras and reported his proceedings, the council, though expressing their approbation generally, soon showed that in regard to particulars, a decided difference of opinion existed. Paul Benfield, a civil servant of the Company in a subordinate position, had addressed a letter to Lord Pigot at Tanjore, immediately after the restoration of the rajah, intimating that he held assignments on the revenues of Tanjore to the amount of £160,000, for money lent to the nabob, and assignments on the growing crop to the amount of £72,000, for money lent to individuals. How this enormous sum, amounting in the aggregate to not much less than a quarter of a million sterling, could have been lent by a junior civilian with a salary inadequate to his current expenses, was not explained, but the pretext at least must have been that he was not himself the principal creditor, but the agent of the creditors by whom the sums had been lent. Lord Pigot, on receiving the intimation, simply answered that he could do nothing more than lay it before the board. Benfield did not choose to submit to any delay, and wrote to the council requesting their “assistance to recover his property, while the right honourable president under their commission remained in authority over those countries.”

When, a few days after Lord Pigot’s return, the claim was brought under the consideration of the board, Benfield was called upon for his vouchers. He had none, and endeavoured to supply the want of them by referring to the records of the cutcherry or court where the obligations were registered, and to the nabob, who, he said, would acknowledge the debt. The claim for money lent to individuals, originally stated at £72,000, was no sooner submitted to examination than it dwindled down to £12,000. The only conclusion at which it was possible to arrive, was that the far greater part of the claim was fictitious, and was, in fact, a gigantic scheme of fraud, reared up probably by collusion with the nabob, for the purpose of cheating the rajah. The council, without expressly adopting this view, acted upon it, by deciding that they could not “comply with Mr. Benfield’s request in any respect, those claims on individuals which bear the appearance of having no connection with government not being sufficiently explained to enable the board to form an opinion thereon, and the assignment of the nabob not being admissible.” This decision was given on the 29th of May. Four days after, on the 3rd of June, the council retraced their steps, and voted, by a majority, that their decision should be reconsidered. The pretext was, that when they decided against Mr. Benfield they supposed that he had demanded, whereas it now appeared that he had only requested their assistance. This was too flimsy to impose upon any one, and there is no want of charity in believing that on this occasion the majority gave golden opinions. Having once committed themselves, they showed all the zeal of young converts in carrying out their new views; and after personally insulting their president, by taking the initiative of business out of his hands, decided, in opposition to him, that the nabob was entitled to make assignments on Tanjore, that the assignments so made formed public claims, and that the rajah should be instructed to recognize the validity of the pledges in corn held by Mr. Benfield.

The dissensions in the Madras council, thus commenced, soon outrivalled those of the council of Bengal, and were followed with more extraordinary results. The garrison of Tanjore had been left in charge of Colonel Harper, but Colonel Stuart, the second in command of the Madras army, chose to consider Tanjore as now the most important station of the Company’s troops, and claimed the command of it as his right. In this he was zealously supported by his superior officer, Sir Robert Fletcher, who, having found himself once more in his proper element, in the midst of strife, had leagued with the majority. The propriety of appointing a resident at Tanjore was unanimously admitted, but the nomination of the individual who should hold the office gave rise to a violent contention. Lord Pigot proposed Mr. Russell, because he believed he would carry out his views; the majority, for that very reason, opposed him, and proposed Colonel Stuart, who would thus combine the offices of resident and commandant. The latter was of course appointed; but on the 19th of August, when it was moved that a copy of instructions for Colonel Stuart, prepared by Sir Robert Fletcher, should be taken into consideration, the president refused to put the question. The council was in consequence adjourned till the following day. As soon as it met the old motion was renewed, and the president went even a step farther than before, by declaring that he would not allow the question to be agitated. This violent stretch of authority gave the majority a great advantage over him. Disregarding his menace, they approved of the instructions, and prepared a letter to Colonel Harper, desiring him to give up his command at Tanjore to Colonel Stuart. The president refused to sign either of the papers, and insisted that without his signature they were of no authority. The council adjourned for two days. When they again met on the 22d, the majority produced a minute, containing a series of propositions, to the effect that the vote of the majority constitutes an act of government, without the concurrence of the president by signature or otherwise, and that it was unconstitutional for the president to refuse either to put a question or to execute the decisions of the majority. Lord Pigot offered to refer these propositions to the directors, and to leave matters at rest in the meantime. This was refused, and the majority resolved that if the president still persisted in his refusal to sign the papers, a written order should be given to the secretary to sign them in name of the council. This resolution brought matters to a crisis, and the following singular proceedings took place.