Chapter XXVIII: Part III: The Modern Age (4)

Still, bursting money-bags do much, and ever since the sacking of Bednore, an ancient Hindu city where he had found treasures worth over £12,000,000, Hyder had never been crippled by any lack of gold. Nothing held him. He was here, there, everywhere. Recovering lost territory one day, losing it the next, fighting everybody, even the Mahrattas, like a wild cat, and inwardly raging at his failure to crush the English, who had just entered into a new treaty with his former ally the Nizâm, by which the latter again acknowledged the rights of the Company to the Northern Circars, and further ceded to it, for the annual payment of £700,000, the whole district of Mysore. Thus Madras gained its _diwâni_ as well as Bengal.

There is something almost ludicrous in the ease with which territory changed hands in those days, and we are left with the picture in our mind's eye of a be-jewelled potentate and a be-stocked officer hobnobbing over bags of rupees, silk-paper documents, and large seals.

This treaty was a bitter pill to Hyder, who retaliated in every possible way, until one day, by deft stratagem, he took his enemies in the rear, appeared by forced marches before the very walls of Madras, so, with the pleasure-gardens and houses of the councillors at his mercy, almost compelled a treaty of mutual aid and defence.

A _volte face_ indeed! Small wonder that the Directors at home, who had been complaining ineffectively of the expenses of the war, became bewildered by the sudden change of _venue_. The general public also, seeing the price of East India stock go down 60 per cent., became uneasy; there is nothing like a drop in Trust-Securities for rousing the national conscience! Dividends were declining, debts were increasing, the glorious hopes of unbounded riches from India had faded; actuaries, nicely balancing debit and credit against the Company, discovered that no less than one and a quarter million of the original stock of four and a quarter of millions had gone, disappeared!

Fateful disclosures these! Public outcry rose loud; voices that had kept discreet silence while profit seemed the certain result of wars, and treaties, and giftings, were now uplifted against rapacity, misconduct, corruption; in the midst of which the alarming discovery was made that the Company required a loan of £1,000,000 from this same public in order to carry on the business. Yet, unless the business was carried on, how could the yearly payments of £400,000 to the royal exchequer, on which the public had insisted, be continued?

Could mismanagement further go?

So three supervisors, vested with full powers, were appointed, and set sail for India in one of His Majesty's frigates. But Fate intervened. They passed the Cape in safety, but were never heard of again.

This was too much. A victim must be found. Therefore Clive was arraigned. That story has already been told, so we can pass on to the mutual recriminations in Parliament, the growing determination on the part of John Bull, honest and dishonest, that something must be done, which found fruit in the first Regulating Act "for the better management of the affairs of the East India Company as well in India as in Europe." By this Act a governor-generalship with a salary of £25,000 was created, together with four councillorships of £8,000. Bombay and Madras were made subordinate to Calcutta, and a Supreme Court of Judicature, appointed by the Crown, was established at the latter place. All the other appointments were to be subject to the confirmation of Parliament, and all the holders of these offices were excluded from commercial pursuits.

The scheme sounded well, but it provided very little aid in reforming the abuses which undoubtedly existed.

It increased the charges upon revenues already overburdened, and the attempt to introduce English ideas of law was calculated to produce more injustice, more oppression, and rouse more alarm and distrust than the previous absence of it had done.

But the dividend for the year 1773 had sunk to 6 per cent.

It was manifestly time to be up and doing--something!

WARREN HASTINGS

A.D. 1773 TO A.D. 1784

It will be remembered that Warren Hastings was the only Member of Council who supported Clive in his decision that all servants of the Company engaging in private trade were bound to pay duty.

Thus, undoubtedly, Clive's enemies must have been his enemies. He had, however, risen with reputation through the various stages of his Indian career; in 1772 he was made President-of-the-Council in Bengal, and immediately set to work to remedy the existing abuses in the collection of the revenue and the whole general administration; a task which was not likely to bring him an addition of friends. While this great revolution in system, which involved the letting of land by public auction, was in full swing, the native potentates beyond Bengal were as usual in a seething state of intrigue. The Prince-Royal-Emperor Shâh-Âlam had at last succeeded in getting the Mahrattas to aid him in recovering Delhi, though he had had to pay a huge price for their help, amongst other things the cession to them of his grant from the English of Allahabad. Consequently, the rich country of the Rohillas (an Afghân race who had settled in India), which reached up from the Delhi plains to the Sivâlik hills, attracted him as a means of again filling his treasury. The Mahrattas were, naturally, nothing loth; so the combined forces marched on Rohilkund, despite the fact that its people were friendly. In the general catch-who-catch-can of India in these days, friendship, honour, truth, counted for nothing it is to be feared, neither with East nor West.

For the tall price of £400,000 the Nawâb of Oude promised to rid the Rohillas of the Mahratta hordes; but being recalled southward by internal dissensions, the Mahrattas, it is said, left of their own accord, and the Rohillas repudiated the bargain. Nothing had been done, they averred, therefore nothing was to be paid.

This gave the Nawâb Sûjah-ud-daula an excellent pretext for war. He had long been anxious to annex Rohilkund, but he needed help to cope with its warlike race. He naturally turned to the English, who had come to aid him (for they were--and small wonder--incensed at the thought of a Mahratta garrison at Allahabad) in repelling a threatened invasion of the Emperor and his allies. So the Treaty of Benares came to be signed, in which, for a payment of £500,000 yearly, Allahabad was once more ceded by the Company (who had promptly repudiated its cession to the Mahrattas) to its original and rightful owner, the Nawâb of Oude. It was also agreed that for a sum of £21,000 a month the said Nawâb should have the right to the services of a British brigade.

So much is certain. Beyond this, unreliability invades the whole business of the Rohilla war. It has been so distorted, by both sides, in the controversy which arose out of the famous impeachment of Warren Hastings, that the truth is now beyond reach.

Undoubtedly, the British troops were mercenaries; but so they had been from the very beginning, and the exchequer of the Company was at the time very low, whilst behind everything was the great company of British shareholders clamouring for a dividend. Blame may be poured as vitriol on the reputations of many men, but the great offender was the general greed of gold _in England_.

Hastings, however, was already on his defence for this apparently unnecessary war (which yet brought in grist to the mill) when he was appointed the first Governor-General of India under the New Act.

This same Act, however, brought out from England his and Clive's bitterest enemy, Philip, afterwards Sir Philip Francis, as one of the four councillors.

So, from the very beginning, Hastings' hands were tied, for General Clavering and Mr Monson had come out in the same ship with Mr Francis, and were led by the nose by him, leaving only Mr Barwell to form an ineffectual minority with the Governor-General.

It was as if the desire at home had been to stultify reform, since quarrel began at once. Warren Hastings declined even to consider the recall of the Resident in Oude, who had been appointed by him under the old rules. The Triumvirate not only recalled him--a man of whom they knew nothing good, bad, or indifferent--by their majority of one, but appointed in his stead a Colonel Champion of whom they knew less, save that he was the author of various highly-coloured, sensational, almost hysterical letters on the iniquities of the Rohilla war; the appointment, therefore, tells its own tale of bias. The instructions given to the Colonel were incredibly foolish. He was to call for instant payment (within fourteen days) of the £400,000 the Nawâb had promised to pay on the conclusion of the war, failing which he was to withdraw the brigade at all costs. Anything more unscrupulous than this demand for what the Triumvirate was pleased to call "blood money," while appearances were to be saved by, possibly, withdrawing aid at a critical moment, could not be imagined. But despite Warren Hastings' vehement opposition, the instructions were issued, though Fate intervened in the cause of common-sense ere they could be carried out, by the news that the war was over!

The dissensions in the Council soon became notorious; the natives--time-servers by nature, and quick to seize on any opportunity of ingratiating themselves with those who have the whiphand--lost no time in trumping up charges against Warren Hastings. These, even one which alleged that out of a bribe of £90,000, only £1,500 fell to the Governor-General's share--a charge which refutes itself by sheer absurdity--were enquired into with reckless, indecent animosity.

Finally, the complaint of one Râjah Nuncomâr brought matters to a crisis. In this matter it is almost impossible to blame sufficiently the conduct of the Triumvirate, who used their wretched majority of one, not for any public purpose, but simply to gratify private spite. Small wonder was it that, confronted with such absolutely unscrupulous animosity, Warren Hastings took up the glove and fought fairly enough, but with every weapon he could lay his hands upon.

There was a Supreme Court in Calcutta, and Nuncomâr had, amongst other and many villainies (for he was known to be a desperate and unprincipled intriguer), a bad habit of forgery.

He had been on trial for this once before, and Hastings had interfered for his release. Now he let the law take its course, and Râjah Nuncomâr, duly tried and sentenced, suffered the extreme penalty, for forgery was then in England a hanging matter.

The execution had immediate effect. The crowd of native informers ready to pour their lies into the ears of the Triumvirate disappeared as if by magic, but the animosity remained; and in the years to come the death of Nuncomâr was used with immense effect in the great impeachment.

Meanwhile, the Nawâb of Oude had died, and his son reigned in his stead. Out of this arose fresh disputes on the Council. The Triumvirate being all for imposing exceedingly harsh terms on the new Nawâb, Asaf-daula; Mr Hastings refusing to sanction what was "no equitable construction of the treaty with the late Nawâb," and was indeed an extortion which the new ruler had "no power to fulfil."

The Directors at home, however, continuing their career of persistent greed, after first refusing to agree with the Triumvirate on the ground that "their treaties with Oude did not expire with the death of Sûjah-daula," suddenly changed their opinion when they realised the immense pecuniary advantage to be derived from the new arrangement. The extortion, therefore, was carried out, Mr Hastings protesting. And now two new problems arose: one in Madras, one in Bombay, both presidencies being subordinate to that of Calcutta. The first concerned the re-installing of the Râjah of Tanjore, which country had been made over to the Nawâb of the Carnatic. This was a quarrel which, like a snowball, grew as it went along, and ended in most extraordinary fashion, by the arrest and imprisonment of Lord Pigot, the Governor of Madras, at the hands of a vice-admiral of the Fleet! The bewildering complexity of complication in the whole case would take pages to unravel, and the result--the death of one poor old man (for Lord Pigot succumbed to the ignominious treatment meted out to him)--would no doubt, in the opinion of the Directors, scarcely justify the expenditure of so much pen and paper.

The trouble in Bombay arose out of the taking of Salsette, and involved conflict with the Mahrattas, who had persisted in refusing possession of it to the English.

The state of affairs amongst the Mahrattas was at this time confusion itself. Râgonâth-Rao had been made regent by Bâji-Rao, who, it will be remembered, had died during his son's minority of grief, after the fatal day of Pânipat. The boy Peishwa had since been murdered; conspirators had declared that his wife had borne a son; claims and counterclaims, intrigue and counter-intrigue, had reduced the Mahratta Government to an invertebrate condition, which the Bombay Council considered favourable to their earnest desire to keep the Portuguese from again acquiring the peninsula (or island) of Salsette, which virtually commands the harbour at Bombay. They therefore temporarily annexed Salsette, and made its cession the foundation of an offer to aid Râgonâth-Rao (commonly called Râgoba), who was then in very low water, against the opposite faction. The temptation was great; a treaty was signed, by which the East India Company, in addition to gaining Salsette and Bassein, were to be paid £225,000.

But here the Supreme Council at Calcutta intervened--why, it is impossible to say--declared in one breath that the treaty with Râgoba was "unpolitic, unreasonable, unjust, and unauthorised," and advised one with the opposite faction.

The quarrel, as usual, becomes complicated in the extreme, and is rendered more confused than it need have been, even in those days of bewilderment, by the double interference from Calcutta and from England. Considering that about six months was necessary to secure a reply from the former place, and about two years from the latter, it is marvellous how any action at all could be decided upon. In the end, however, a treaty was signed with Râgoba's enemies, which raised great indignation in Bombay, not because it involved any breach of honour, but because it brought in less to the Treasury.

Warren Hastings, however, was now busy over financial reforms, and despite the quibbling and captious criticism of the Triumvirate, evolved a scheme which showed real grip of the problem at issue, as indeed might have been expected from a man of his intelligence and vast Indian experience. It was, however, rejected by the Three, who at the same time excused themselves from suggesting any other scheme, because they were not "sufficiently qualified by local observation and experience to undertake so difficult a task."

Surely fatuousness could no farther go? We have here men who consider themselves qualified to criticise, while they admit total ignorance of the subject criticised!

Stung, no doubt, by this obvious retort, Mr Francis finally produced a scheme--a scheme which, containing as it does the very first inception of the "Great Mistake" which has dogged the footsteps of England in her dealings with India, had better have been hanged like a millstone round its promulgator's neck, and he drowned in the sea, than that it should ever have seen the light.

For amid quotations, no doubt, from Adam Smith and Mirabeau--the latter in French, after his usual wont--Philip Francis, mastertype of the self-satisfied Western mind--the mind which degenerates so easily into that of the crank, the faddist--started the cardinal error of all errors in India; that is, the statement that the property of the land is not vested in the Sovereign power, but belonged to the people.

Looking down the years, seeing the manifold evils which this pernicious engrafting of Western ideals on Eastern actions has produced; the alienation of the land, the hopeless slavery of the cultivator to the money-lender, the harsh evictions rendered necessary by the loss of the tenant's credit (which had ever been due to his _unalterable_ hold on the land, combined with his _inability to sell it_), one can but wish that the millstone had done its work!

The evil, however, was scotched for the moment. Colonel Monson died, and Warren Hastings, by his casting vote as Governor, now ceased to be in the minority.

He immediately used his newly-acquired ascendency to appoint what was practically the first Settlement Commission in India. That is to say, a body of tried and experienced officers, who should "furnish accurate statements of the values of lands, uniform in design, and of authority in the execution," which should serve as a basis for revenue, and would also "assure the ryots (peasants) against arbitrary exactions," and "give them perpetual and undisturbed possessions of their lands."

"This," he goes on to say in his Minute, "is not to be done by proclamations and edicts, nor by indulgences to _zemindars_ (large proprietors) or farmers. The former will not be obeyed unless enforced by regulations so framed as to produce their own effect without requiring the hand of Government to interpose its support; and the latter, though they may feed the luxury of the _zemindars_ or the rapacity of the farmers, will prove no relief to the cultivator, _whose welfare ought to be the immediate and primary care of Government_."

Bravo, Warren Hastings! If there was anything to forgive, one would forgive much for the sake of such a creed.

His success spread consternation amongst his enemies. Something must be done, and done quickly.

One Colonel Macleane had gone home, arriving in February 1776. In a moment of great depression in the previous year, Warren Hastings had entrusted him with a letter of instruction to be conveyed to the Directors, in which he declared that he "would not continue in the Government of Bengal unless certain conditions" were accepted.

No use was made of this letter till the 10th October, when, after a stormy attempt on the part of the Company to oust Warren Hastings, Colonel Macleane wrote announcing that he held the Governor-General's resignation!

These are the bald facts. Eager to catch at any excuse for the removal of an opponent, the resignation, absolutely unauthorised, wholly tentative, was accepted without any discussion of the conditions, and a Mr Wheler appointed as successor.

The English mail of the 19th of June 1777 which conveyed this astounding piece of news to Calcutta took almost every one by surprise; except, apparently, General Clavering and Mr Francis. At any rate, on the very next day the former boldly issued orders signed "Clavering, Governor-General," and requested delivery from Mr Hastings of the keys.

A free fight indeed! That day _two_ councils were held: one by General Clavering, with Mr Francis as sole supporter; one by Warren Hastings and the ever faithful Mr Barwell.

Could animosity, pitiful squabbling, disreputable intrigue, further go?

Luckily, there was another power in Calcutta capable of deciding the rival claims, and to it Mr Hastings, ever inclined to toleration, appealed.

The Supreme Court decided unanimously in favour of Warren Hastings, and so the matter ended for a time; Mr Wheler, who had come out to be Governor-General, taking Colonel Monson's place, and, naturally, restoring the Triumvirate, which, however, after a brief interval, dwindled again by the death of General Clavering.

All this is very petty, very uninteresting, in the face of the vast questions which were surging up for settlement all over India, but it is instructive as showing the absolute futility of the India House in its attempts at control, in its inept shilly-shallying between greed of gold and its desire to implant Western ethics on the East. So the quarrel went on, involving amongst other things a duel between Warren Hastings and Mr Francis, in which the latter was badly wounded and had to go home!

Meanwhile, the Mahrattas were more than ever at loggerheads amongst themselves. Râgoba's claims were readmitted by a large number of the faction who had formerly been against him, and with whom a treaty had been made. They applied for help under that treaty (to reinstate Râgoba this time!) and received it; no doubt all the more readily because that gentleman had been the Bombay Council's original nominee. Also because, about this time, the arrival of a French ship at Bombay with a mission purporting to be from Louis XVI. to the Mahratta Court at Poona caused some alarm. For hostilities seemed not far off in Europe between France and England, and the chief member of the so-called embassy was one Chevalier St Lubin, who was known to have previously been with the Mahratta forces.

And here followeth a welter of confused incidents, claims, and counterclaims, which pages would not suffice to unravel.

The Triumvirate, reduced to two, opposed help. Warren Hastings with his casting vote carried it, but ere the brigade sent from Calcutta arrived at the seat of war, Râgoba's half of the Poona court had whacked the other half, and having gained ascendency, proposed to do without their candidate!

Here was an _impasse_ for people whose Western minds could not follow such mental somersaults. To add to their confusion, war had been again declared between France and England, and before the Council had had time to recover from their surprise, the victorious Poona party had been again overthrown, and the now ascendant one of Nuna Furnavese was known to harbour Chevalier St Lubin, and to have French proclivities!

There seemed to be nothing for it now save once more to make Râgoba a figurehead.

In truth, as one follows in the maelstrom of Indian intrigue, even as briefly as is possible here, the efforts of these harassed, distracted Western diplomatists to keep their honour above water, one is filled with pity for them. It would have been better not to fight at all, if their code of ethics forbade them the full use of the weapons used against them.

So the weary Mahratta war dragged on and on, backed at first by the hearty approval of the Court of Directors, who pointed out "the necessity of counteracting the views of the French at Poona."

This same war was full of incident. Scindiah and Holkar flash over its horizon, now in alliance, now in defiance; territories and towns were taken, and lost, and retaken; the whole wide, central plain of India and all the western coast-line was perambulated by soldiery; and in the end, in 1782, a treaty was entered into at Sâlbai which was utterly disadvantageous to the English, and which wrung from the Bombay presidency the despairing cry that it must "henceforward require from the Bengal treasury a large and annual supply of money" to carry on the concern.

Meanwhile, in Madras, affairs had not been much more happy. During the war with France, Pondicherry had been assaulted and had capitulated with the honours of war, but in all other ways success was absent. Friction arose between the presidency and the Nizâm over the question of a French garrison, and though the matter was outwardly smoothed over and friendly alliance continued, it formed the basis of a confederation between the Mahrattas, Hyder-Ali, and the Nizâm, having for object the _total expulsion of the English from India_.

Hyder-Ali, whose sword had been rusting in its scabbard since the Peace of 1763, had his own private grievance of help promised by treaty and withheld, because the object for which it was asked was deemed unworthy. This was a constant cause of the endless dissensions between the British and the native princes, and shows clearly the absolute folly of attempting, as the Company did, to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds; that is to say, to compound a treaty on one ethical basis, and carry it out on another.

He instantly commenced operations in the Carnatic, and, though the Nizâm was bought off by the conciliatory measures of the Bengal Council, continued his attack with unhesitating ferocity. He was, frankly, a murderous madman, who, as the phrase runs, "saw red" on the slightest provocation. But even _his_ excesses were no warrant for Edmund Burke's blatant rhetoric in his celebrated impeachment, where "menacing meteors blacken horizons," and "burst to pour down contents (?) on peaceful plains" (?). Where "storms of universal fire blast every field," and "fleeing from their flaming villages, miserable inhabitants are swept by whirlwinds of cavalry into captivity in unknown and hostile lands."

What dictionary did Burke use, one wonders, and how comes it that his cheap rhodomontade passes for eloquence?

Hyder-Ali, however, made himself very disagreeable, and in the short space of twenty-nine days brought one disaster after another to the British arms. They began to look on defeat as their portion.

Madras being, apparently, unable to grapple with its enemy, Sir Eyre Coote was sent from Bengal to take command. But he found every military equipment faulty. The commissariat was beneath contempt, and for months the British force was kept stationary, unable to close with Hyder, who, aided by French officers, flashed here and there at his pleasure. But the day of reckoning came on the 1st July 1781, when Hyder-Ali lost ten thousand men, and the English but three hundred and sixty.

Though fortune continued to waver between the combatants, this was practically the turning-point in the war. France, it is true, sent a fleet to interfere on the native side; England sent one to checkmate it; but it was death which finally intervened--death who conquered wild, untamable, almost irresponsible Hyder. He died suddenly, at the age of eighty, from a carbuncle on the neck.

He left a worthy tiger cub behind him, and Tippoo-Sultân continued his father's fierce fighting with unvarying ferocity and varying success, helped in all ways by the French, so long as that nation continued at war with England. When that ended, he fought still, off his own bat, and the war, which completely crippled Madras, dragged on with markedly increasing arrogance on the one side, and increasing submission on the other, until in 1784, in spite of Tippoo-Sultân's many vile crimes, his shameless murderings of English officers, his still more terrible offences towards women and children, peace was concluded with him; a peace, certainly, without honour. To the minds of some it may seem the most indelible stain on the reputation of the British in India.

Warren Hastings, at the time the treaty was signed by the other members of the Supreme Council, was in Lucknow, whither he had gone by way of Benares.

The Râjah of this place had in 1775, it will be remembered, found British protection by the treaty with Asaf-daula, Nawâb of Oude, which Warren Hastings had condemned as unfair, and of which one of the articles was the cession of Benares. As usual, an immediate dispute arose as to what revenue and charges were to be paid; a dispute which waxed and waned until 1781. There can be no doubt but that on the English side increasing impecuniosity prompted growing demands, while on the Râjah's side was as constant a desire for the evasion even of just claims.

That Warren Hastings considered his position unassailable is evidenced by the fact that, when, in 1781, on his way to Oude he paused at Benares, he placed the Râjah (who, it may be said, was a man of no family whatever) under arrest in his palace to await further explanations, in the charge of some companies of sepoys who did not even _carry_ ball-cartridge. Palpably, therefore, no violence was intended. It could not have been, since Hastings had but a small escort. Rescue, however, was immediately resolved on by the populace; a general rush was made for the palace, the sepoys were cut to pieces, and the Râjah made good his escape. Almost immediately afterwards, in consequence of the annihilation of a small British relief force from Mirzapore, the whole countryside rose in the Râjah's interest, and some time elapsed ere a force sufficient to cope with the insurrection could be gathered together. Finally, the Râjah (who had throughout protested his desire for peace, even while preparing at all points for war) fled to a fort, whither he had previously conveyed most of his treasures. Warren Hastings, therefore, at once began to form a new Government. A grandson was selected as successor, the tribute payable was increased, and the whole criminal jurisdiction of the province (which had been wretchedly administered) vested in Bengal. After this the late Râjah was pursued to his fort, whence he fled, leaving his women behind. His mother attempted defence, but finally capitulated on the promise of personal safety and freedom from search; the latter stipulation was, however, undoubtedly violated, as the payment of "10 rupees each to the four female searchers" occurs in the accounts of the incident. But this in no way implicates Warren Hastings, who asserts his great regret that the breach of faith should have occurred. It may be mentioned that some £300,000 was found in the fort, which, with the amount that the Râjah had, doubtless, carried away with him, effectually disposes of a poverty which prevented a payment of £50,000. (These details are necessary because of the great stress laid by Mr Burke in the impeachment on this Benares incident.)

The Governor-General had intended passing on to Lucknow, but the Nawâb Asaf-daula, put out by the delay at Benares, was in a hurry, and met Warren Hastings at Chunar.

Here a new treaty was signed. It will be remembered that when the last one was entered into on the occasion of Asaf-daula's accession, Warren Hastings had protested against it as unfair. He now, therefore, exempted the Nawâb from all expenses of the English army quartered on him, with the exception of the single brigade arranged for by his father, Sûjah-daula, and from all other expenses to English gentlemen excepting the charges of the Resident and his office.

As a set-off to this nothing was exacted; but leave was given to the Nawâb to resume certain _jâgkirs_, on condition that in all cases where such grants were guaranteed by the Company, equivalent value to the annual revenue should be given yearly. Not an unfair arrangement, since a fixed revenue, though uncertain through the mutability of the person who has to pay it, is less uncertain than one dependent on fluctuating crops.

But there were two _jâghirs_ which, so to speak, filled the Nawâb's eye: they were those held, and illegally held, by his mother and his grandmother. In addition to the vast stretches of land, the revenues of which made these two princesses not only independent, but as possessors of small armies, dangerous factors for strife in internal politics, they were known to possess, and wrongfully possess, the treasure, estimated at £3,000,000, of the late Nawâb. To all this they had no possible claim. Under Mahomedan law the widow takes one-eighth only of her husband's personal possessions, the mother nothing. There is no possibility of will, no possible over-riding of the law. They were, therefore, robbers, and that the Nawâb should have refrained from violence for so long is to his credit. This, however, was due to an unwarrantable interference on the part of the British. Mr Bristow, the Resident appointed by the Triumvirate, had, with their consent, and despite Hastings' dissent, guaranteed immunity to Asaf-daula's mother. As a matter of fact, no foreign power was admissible in a family dispute; in addition, the Begum was in the wrong.

There can be no doubt that Warren Hastings knew the justice of Asaf-daula's claim to the treasure, or that English troops accompanied the Nawâb to Fyzabad, where the Begum resided.

Beyond this, we have "diabolical expedients," "torturing processes," "works of spoliation," besides a variety of rhetorical and eloquent abuse, on the one side; on the other, unconvincing affidavits of the Begum's complicity in the Benares insurrection and a matter-of-fact and apparently credible denial _in toto_ of diabolical expedients _et hoc genus omne_.

And behind all we have a very virtuous, very greedy British public, which insisted on being paid £400,000 a year by a bankrupt and overburdened concern.

For that was now the condition of the Honourable East India Company. It had attempted too much, or rather its servants had done these things which ought to have been done, without regard to dividends. At the close of Warren Hastings' administration--he resigned his office on the 8th February 1785, practically compelled thereto by the action of the Board of Directors--the revenues of India were not equal to the ordinary expense of Government.

A terrible indictment, truly! For which, however, some excuse may be found in the following short chapter on administrations and impeachments.

ADMINISTRATIONS AND IMPEACHMENTS

A.D. 1761 TO A.D. 1785

Clive and Warren Hastings need to be bracketed together in the history of India. They were the men who made our Empire, and they were both impeached for their methods by their countrymen.

And both were acquitted. How came this about?

There is a little sentence in the History of India by James Mill the historian (father to John Stuart Mill), a man presumably above sordid considerations, a man whom one would never suspect of commercialism, which answers the question:--

"_In India the true test of the Government as affecting the interest of the English nation is found in its financial results_."

This is not intended as blame. On the contrary, Mill goes on to make the deliberate but not quite accurate statement that Warren Hastings' administration _must_ have been bad, because, though in 1772, when that administration began, the revenue was but £2,373,750, as against £5,315,197 in 1785, the additional income did not provide for 5 per cent. interest on the additional debt incurred.

That and that only was the _fons et origo mali_. England wanted gold.

Doubtless the expenses of the ruinous wars which devastated India during the latter half of the eighteenth century were a terrible charge upon the revenues; but the revenues increased during the same time, and were more than equal to current expenses, only they did not provide for £400,000 a year tax, and the payment of more than 5 per cent. interest.

In truth, England had not yet grasped the significance of the White Man's burden; she wanted to be paid for carrying it. That is the bitter truth.

But during the administrations of both Clive and Warren Hastings an effort, at least, was made to make that administration worthy of Englishmen. Clive spent his whole force against corruption; Warren Hastings spent his in an attempt to govern the people peacefully and righteously. So much attention is absorbed, as a rule, by the question of his guilt or innocence in regard to certain specific charges, that none is given to the masterly way in which he turned his brief ascendency in the Council, caused by Colonel Monson's death, not to any scheme for personal aggrandisement or even to public money-getting, but to the passing of a revenue settlement which should protect the peasant. In the course of the argument against Mr Francis' views (which necessarily formed part of the scheme) Mr Hastings made a remark which deserves quotation, if only because it seems to have roused no denial, not even from the irrepressible Francis.

"It is a fact which will with difficulty obtain credit in England, though the notoriety of it here justifies me in asserting it, that much the greatest part of the _zemindars_" (big proprietors, petty Râjahs, and Nawâbs, etc.) "are incapable of judging or acting for themselves, being either minors, or men of weak understanding, or absolute idiots."

This is a sweeping indictment which, had it not been incapable of denial or mitigation, must certainly have met with censure. But even Mr Francis acquiesces. He admits that "many of the _zemindars_ will at first be incapable of managing their lands themselves."

Now we have here a most ominous admission which gives us the clue by which we can unravel much more in this tangled web of eighteenth-century India.

It was the upper class which was corrupt, which was degenerate utterly. Long centuries of unpunished crime, of depravity without one check, had done their work. The scions of the small nobility were born decrepid; they died early, outworn by vice, leaving heirs as degenerate as themselves. In lesser--ever, thank Heaven!--in lessening degree this has remained the great problem in India: how to give freedom to its hereditary rulers, and yet to ensure that the race shall not suffer, yet to give it freedom from hereditary evils.

In the eighteenth century the men of courts and cities were, as a rule, vicious to the core. If evidence be needed on this point, go to Delhi, go to Lucknow, and there, in the dregs, and lees, and off-scourings of what was once a dynasty, you will still find some of the meanest specimens of humanity on God's earth.

It was with the far-away ancestors of these off-scourings of dead courts, full, then, of pride and power, that men like Clive and Hastings often had to deal. Small wonder, then, if they often dealt with them unwisely, harshly, angered by their hopeless treachery.

But the great factor in all the many oppressions which, undoubtedly, formed part of English annexation in India was not private rapacity, it was public greed.

What, for instance, was even Clive's asserted £300,000 of plunder beside the £400,000 of yearly tribute to the English Exchequer? As for Warren Hastings' fortune, he left India an impoverished man, with scarce enough wherewithal to pay the expenses of defending himself from the charge brought against him by his country for unbridled peculation.

Both Clive and Hastings had hard parts to play, and, considering the difficulties against which they had to contend, they played them well. Though, perhaps, neither of them realised (and certainly no one else did) that the times in which they lived were transitional, that the very existence of the East India Company as a purely mercantile concern was fast drawing to a close, and that a new life of responsibility--the life of true empire--was opening before it, they acted as if they had so realised it. They flung rupees behind them to stay the gold-grubbing multitude, careless, over-careless of how they gained them; but--but they took their own way! Hastings especially identified himself with the people of India; he learnt their language, knew their hoarded wisdom, and often appealed to the lessons of their past history.

This in itself was an offence to the self-sufficient West, which failed, and often still fails, to find excuse for a breach of its own laws in the different ethical standards of the East.

Take Clive's rapacity. There was no law forbidding the reception of presents. He did great things, very great things for Mîr Jâffar, and under the same misconception of enormous wealth which made the country itself claim one million of money as compensation for a loss of £5,000, he accepted a fee of £180,000.

Regarding the Omichand incident--the only other accusation formulated against him which is of any importance--it is, at least, arguable that when bare existence for your countrymen depends on outwitting a traitor, an informer, a villain, any weapon is legal.

In like manner, if it is possible to disentangle the actual charges made against Warren Hastings from the network of words in which Sheridan and Burke caught the unwary minds of many ignorant people, it will be found that in every charge which went up to trial a simple excuse bars the way of blame.

The charge concerning his responsibility for the extermination of the Rohillas, of which he was acquitted even by the House of Commons, finds answer in his vehement dissent from the treaty forced on him by the Triumvirate, and by which he was bound to provide the Nawâb of Oude with troops.

That concerning his cruelty to the Râjah of Benares is met by the undoubted fact that no article in the treaty with the latter gives colour to the contention that the tribute payable was a fixed and unalterable sum, while the fact that £300,000 worth of treasure was discovered in the possession of the Râjah's women, disposes effectually of the plea that poverty prevented payment.

Against the accusation of his having aided and abetted the Nawâb of Oude in seizing and confiscating the personal property of the Begums, stands the undoubted fact that these ladies could not, by the laws of India, possess such property; while the charge of undue cruelty in the treatment of these same ladies is absolutely unprovable, by reason of the conflicting evidence on both sides.

Then the charge of having, during his administration, raised the cost of the civil establishment some £5,000,000, is more than met by his undenied efforts to place the Government of India on a basis worthy of England, and by the necessity for either accepting and carrying through new responsibilities, or allowing the Company to sink back into its former state, when a paltry £20 a year was all the salary it could afford to pay men whom it yet vested with almost unlimited power of extortion.

The eighth and last count--for it is as well to confine refutation to what actually went up for trial--his personal rapacity and corruption is answered conclusively by the undoubted fact that when he retired, the sum of some £72,000 represented his entire fortune.

Truly, there was some justification for the bitter cry with which he ended his defence--a defence which lies practically in denouncing English greed for gold:--

"I gave you all, and you have rewarded me with confiscation, disgrace, and a life of impeachment."

He was on his trial for no less than nine years.

These two great men left India a very different place from what they had found it. The East India Company was trying now to govern, as well as to make money. There was scarcely a district throughout the length and breadth of the land into which the thought of England had not entered; few in which the lives of Englishmen did not form a not always wholesome example. In Lucknow, however, Claude Martin, soldier of both France and England, quaint admixture of honour and dishonour, while he aided and abetted the Nawâb in cock-fighting, drew the line at debaucheries, though he kept a considerable number of wives. This, however, was forced on him by his own merits, since the courtly, good-looking, middle-aged Frenchman's favourite charity was the educating of orphans, and the girls for whom he performed this kindly office had a trick of refusing the eligible _partis_ offered them, and electing to remain with their guardian!

Walter Reinhardt, nicknamed the "Sombre," was not so estimable a creature. He was, undoubtedly, the murderer, while in the Nawâb of Bengal's service, of the English at Patna in 1763, and the arch-factor in many other crimes. But he met his dues by marrying one of the most remarkable women of India. It was no light task to be the husband of the Begum Sumroo, who buried a laughing girl at whom the blue-eyed German from Luxembourg had cast an approving glance, under her chair of state; buried her alive, and sat on her for three days. Four was not necessary; Walter the Sombre had learnt his lesson in three!

After his death she ruled her state of Sirdhâna, not very far from Delhi, until she died in 1838, a very old woman, who possibly, despite her conversion to Roman Catholicism, looked back on her youth as a dancing-girl in Delhi with a vague regret.

Then there was George Thomas, an Irishman, whilom favourite of the aforesaid Begum, who cherished the hope--so he says--"of attempting the conquest of the Punjaub, and aspired to the honour of placing the British Standard on the Attock." He only succeeded in establishing for himself an independent principality near Hânsi, which he yielded to Lord Lake in 1803.

But all over India, in almost every town of import, Englishmen were to be found in positions of trust under native rulers. Briefly, they had come to stay; and no amount of legislation by Parliament, no prohibition of diplomacy, no exhortation to refrain from treaties or from meddling in native politics, could now avail to prevent England from becoming first factor in India.

It may be worth while to glance round that India and gain, as it were, a pictorial view of it at the time when England and the English Parliament first assumed political responsibility in regard to it by the establishment of a Board-of-Control appointed by the Crown.

In the far north, Kandahâr and Kâbul were, as ever, engaged in petty warfare, the sons and grandsons of Ahmed-Shâh Durrâni each striving for the mastery. The Punjâb was held by the Sikhs so far as the Sutlej. What are now called the Cis Sutlej States including the great battlefield of Pânipat, being under Mahratta influence. This influence had also made itself felt at Delhi, where the Great Moghul, Star-of-the-Universe and Defender-of-the-Faith, Shâh-Âlam by name, led the life of a pensioner, a prisoner, his authority gone save as a watchword to rouse strife. Oude was in the hands of the British debauchee Asaf-daula. Thence passing through Benares lay the English-held Bengal, Behar, Orissa. Westward was Poona, Guzerât, almost all Râjputana, Agra, and a great part of Central India; these were strongholds of the Mahrattas. Mysore, headquarters of the man-monster Tippoo-Sultân, murderer-in-chief after his father Hyder-Ali's death, marched with Central India the Dekkan fief of that half-hearted ally the Nizâm. Below that, again, came the Carnatic, held by that most troublesome and expensive of potentates the Nawâb of Arcot, tame bear (and bore) to the Madras Presidency, which must have wished its _protégé_ at the bottom of the sea many and many a time.

And under all these broad classifications, such a welter of proud, poor principalities and grasping, vicious courts as surely this world's history shows nowhere else. The horrid outcome of unlimited, unbridled power in the past.

And below this again?

Below this, again, the dreaming heart of India, unchanged, unchangeable.

THE BOARD OF CONTROL

A.D. 1786 TO A.D. 1811

The heroic age of the history of British India is now past. Forced by Fate and by the strong right hand of two strong men, England, with one eye still fixed on gold, had had to turn the other on the duties of empire. So the Company was, as it were, split in twain. The old commercial interests were dealt with, as heretofore, by the Board of Directors, but the control "of all acts, operations, or concerns, which in any wise relate to the civil or military government or revenues of the British possessions of the East Indies," was vested in a Board of six members, all appointed by the Crown.

The word "British" is noteworthy in conjunction with possessions, and shows the ease with which the English nation, while still loudly condemning the action of the East India Company, availed itself of the result of such actions. The chief point of interest in the New Act was the power given to Parliament to pay the salaries, charges, and expenses of the Board of Control out of the revenues of India, provided this charge did not exceed £16,000. This was the nucleus of the present payment of £144,000 in the India Office alone.

As regards the Constitution in India few changes were made, and, after a brief tenure of office on the part of Mr Macpherson, Lord Cornwallis went out to India as Governor-General. He had served successfully in Ireland, but with disaster in America. Considering his entire ignorance of even the first conditions of Eastern life, his Governor-Generalship was much less disastrous than it might have been, though it was marred by the crystallisation of the Great Mistake which Mr Francis had first presented in nebulous form; that is to say, the engrafting on India of the Western idea that the land cannot possibly belong to the State, but that some proprietor most be found for it.

But ere this was embodied in the Permanent Settlement of Bengal, Lord Cornwallis found his hands full of minor diplomacies. Tippoo-Sultân was at war with the Mahrattas, and the latter had foolishly been given promise of assistance by the British.

"An awkward, foolish scrape," writes the Governor-General. "How we shall get out of it with honour, God knows; but out of it we must get somehow, and give no troops."

That, practically, was the first charge on his administration. How to get out of minor squabbles, and leave the prime movers to fight it out amongst themselves. Hitherto the British troops had been mercenaries. As such they had made their influence felt in every corner of India. Now all was changed. England was a power in the East, hostile or friendly as she chose, not to be bribed to the support of any one. His next task was to interview the Nawâb of Oude on the subject of the protection of _his_ state, and in so doing rather to sidewalk round this firm non-mercenary position adopted by the Board of Control. For £500,000 was taken yearly as payment for two brigades which were to bring "the blessings of peace" under the ægis "of the most formidable power in Hindustan." Asaf-daula, however, was hardly worth protecting. He extorted every penny he could get from everybody in order to spend it on debauchery, and allowed his ministers to cheat and plunder both him and his country.

Another and a more worthy visitor pleaded for an interview, and was refused the favour. This was Jîwan Bakht, the heir-apparent to the Emperor Shâh-Âlam. He had been received by Warren Hastings, who, possibly because he saw in him a promise not often to be found in the Indian potentates of those days, allowed him £40,000 a year as maintenance. "Gentle, lively, possessed of a high sense of honour, of a sound judgment, an uncommon quick penetration, a well-cultivated understanding, with a spirit of resignation and an equanimity almost exceeding any within reach of knowledge or recollection."

Such was the character given by the great Proconsul after six months of daily intercourse; but caution was now the order of the day.

"The whole political use that may be derived" (from an interview) "is at present uncertain, but there may arise _some future advantage_ if we can gain his affection and attachment ... but I have already prepared his mind not to expect many of the outward ceremonials usually paid in this country to the princes of the House of Timur, as they would not only be extremely irksome to me personally, but also, in my opinion, improper to be submitted to by the Governor-General at the seat of your Government."

So wrote Lord Cornwallis, and Jiwan Bakht, with spirit _and_ resignation, contented himself finally with a request that he might be allowed at least asylum under British protection. He died of fever shortly after at Benares. Poor, proud prince of the blood royal! Was he really next-of-kin, as it were, to the Great Moghuls? If we had given him a chance, as we gave it to the monster Tippoo, to half-a-hundred scoundrels all over India, would he have regained the empire of Akbar? Who knows? He vanishes into the "might-have-been" with his high sense of honour, his spirit, and his resignation.

After this, Lord Cornwallis with a light heart took in hand the abuses of both the civil and the military services, and managed, by "making it a complete opposition question" which "brought forth all the secret foes and lukewarm friends of Government," to obtain higher salaries and better positions for both soldiers and civilians.

So far well. Then once more Tippoo-Sultân intervened, and in a trice India was back in the old days of intrigue, secret treaties, allies, and war. Even Lord Cornwallis, the Liberal pillar of upright, straightforward policy, fell before the peculiar temptations of Oriental diplomacy. There is much to be said for him. Tippoo was an unwarrantable survival. He ought long before to have been hanged, drawn, and quartered. As it was, he burst in upon the coming civilisation and culture, as Mr Burke's 'meteor' burst upon the 'peaceful fields.'

It would take too long to tell the tale of the four years' war during which the Mahrattas, the Dekkanites, and the English, hunted Tippoo ineffectively from pillar to post, and he retaliated in kind. Finally, in 1792, he was cornered at Seringapatam, and once more peace was concluded with a man who deserved nothing but the death of a mad dog.

Then ensued a partition of spoil after the old style; each ally receiving so many lakhs of money, so much territory. After which Lord Cornwallis, covered with glory, found leisure to address himself towards crystallising into our rule for ever--unless some Government arises strong enough to put the wheel back and start afresh--the Fundamental Error, the Great Mistake of the British Empire in India.

In 1793 Mr Dundas and Mr Pitt, neither of them possessing a scrap of first-hand knowledge of their subject, "shut themselves up for ten days at Wimbledon" (Heaven save the mark!) and evolved out of their inner consciousness the Permanent Settlement; thus once and for ever--unless for the forlorn hope of a strong Government--alienating from the Sovereign power of India a possession which had been the Crown's by right beyond the memory of man--in all probability for over five thousand years.