Sir John Strachey,
Hastings and the Rohillas.
"The year 1781 opened for Hastings on a troubled sea of
dangers, difficulties, and distress. Haidar Ali was raging in
the Carnatic, Goddard and Camac were still fighting the
Marathas, and French fleets were cruising in the Bay of
Bengal. … It was no time for standing upon trifles. Money
must be raised somehow, if British India was to be saved.
Among other sources of supply, he turned to the Rajah of
Banaras [or Benares]. Chait Singh was the grandson of an
adventurer, who had ousted his own patron and protector from
the lordship of the district so named. In 1775, his fief had
been transferred by treaty from the Nawab of Oudh to the
Company. As a vassal of the Company he was bound to aid them
with men and money in times of special need. Five lakhs of
rupees—£50,000—and two thousand horse was the quota which
Hastings had demanded of him in 1780. In spite of the revenue
of half-a-million, of the great wealth stored up in his
private coffers, and of the splendid show which he always made
in public, the Rajah pleaded poverty, and put off compliance
with the demands of his liege lord. … Chait Singh had
repeatedly delayed the payment of his ordinary tribute; his
body-guard alone was larger than the force which Hastings
required of him; he was enrolling troops for some warlike
purpose, and Hastings' agents accused him of secret plottings
with the Oudh Begams at Faizabad. … The Rajah, in fact, like
a shrewd, self-seeking Hindu, was waiting upon circumstances,
which at that time boded ill for his English neighbours. The
Marathas, the French, or some other power might yet relieve
him from the yoke of a ruler who restrained his ambition, and
lectured him on the duty of preserving law and order among his
own subjects. … It has often been argued that, in his stern
dealings with the Rajah of Banaras, Hastings was impelled by
malice and a desire for revenge. But the subsequent verdict of
the House of Lords on this point, justifies itself to all who
have carefully followed the facts of his life. … As a matter
of policy, he determined to make an example of a contumacious
vassal, whose conduct in that hour of need added a new danger
to those which surrounded the English in India. A heavy fine
would teach the Rajah to obey orders, and help betimes to fill
his own treasury with the sinews of war. … Chait Singh had
already tried upon the Governor-General those arts which in
Eastern countries people of all classes employ against each
other without a blush. He had sent Hastings a peace-offering
of two lakhs—£20,000. Hastings took the money, but reserved
it for the Company's use. Presently he received an offer of
twenty lakhs for the public service. But Hastings was in no
mood for further compromise in evasion of his former demands.
{1724}
He would be satisfied with nothing less than half a million in
quittance of all dues. In July, 1781, he set out, with
Wheeler's concurrence, for the Rajah's capital. … Traveling,
as he preferred to do, with a small escort and as little
parade as possible, he arrived on the 16th August at the
populous and stately city. … On his way thither, at Baxar,
the recusant Rajah had come to meet him, with a large retinue,
in the hope of softening the heart of the great Lord Sahib. He
even laid his turban on Hastings' lap. … With the
haughtiness of an ancient Roman, Hastings declined his prayer
for a private interview. On the day after his arrival at
Banaras, the Governor-General forwarded to Chait Singh a paper
stating the grounds of complaint against him, and demanding an
explanation on each point. The Rajah's answer seemed to
Hastings' so offensive in style and unsatisfactory in
substance;' it was full, in fact, of such transparent, or, as
Lord Thurlow afterwards called them, 'impudent' falsehoods,
that the Governor-General issued orders for placing the Rajah
under arrest. Early the next morning, Chait Singh was quietly
arrested in his own palace. … Meanwhile his armed retainers
were flocking into the city from his strong castle of
Ramnagar, on the opposite bank. Mixing with the populace, they
provoked a tumult, in which the two companies of Sepoys
guarding the prisoner were cut to pieces. With unloaded
muskets and empty pouches—for the ammunition had been
forgotten—the poor men fell like sheep before their butchers.
Two more companies, in marching to their aid through the
narrow streets, were nearly annihilated. During the tumult
Chait Singh quietly slipped out of the palace, dropped by a
rope of turbans into a boat beneath, and crossed in safety to
Ramnagar. … If Chait Singh's followers had not shared
betimes their master's flight across the river, Hastings, with
his band of thirty Englishmen and fifty Sepoys, might have
paid very dearly for the sudden miscarriage of his plans. But
the rabble of Banaras had no leader, and troops from the
nearest garrisons were already marching to the rescue. …
Among the first who reached him was the gallant Popham,
bringing with him several hundred of his own Sepoys. … The
beginning of September found Popham strong enough to open a
campaign, which speedily avenged the slaughters at Banaras and
Ramnagar, and carried Hastings back into the full stream of
richly-earned success. … The capture of Bijigarh on the 10th
November, closed the brief but brilliant campaign. The booty,
amounting to £400,000, was at once divided among the captors;
and Hastings lost his only chance of replenishing his treasury
at the expense of Chait Singh. He consoled himself and
improved the Company's finances, by bestowing the rebel's
forfeit lordship on his nephew, and doubling the tribute
hitherto exacted. He was more successful in accomplishing
another object of his journey up the country."
L. J. Trotter,
Warren Hastings,
chapter 6.
"It is certain … that Chait Singh's rebellion was largely
aided by the Begums or Princesses of Faizabad. On this point
the evidence contained in Mr. Forrest's volumes ['Selections
from Letters, Despatches and other State Papers in the Foreign
Department of the Government of India,' edited by G. W.
Forrest] leaves no shadow of reasonable doubt. In plain truth,
the Begums, through their Ministers, the eunuchs, had levied
war both against the Company and their own kinsmen and master,
the new Wazir of Oudh. Some years before, when the Francis
faction ruled in Calcutta, these ladies, the widow and the
mother of Shuja, had joined with the British Agent in robbing
the new Wazir, Asaf-ud-daula, of nearly all the rich treasure
which his father had stored up in Faizabad. Hastings solemnly
protested against a transaction which he was powerless to
prevent. The Begums kept their hold upon the treasure, and
their Jaghirs, or military fiefs, which ought by rights to
have lapsed to the new Wazir. Meanwhile Asaf-ud-daula had to
govern as he best could, with an empty treasury, and an army
mutinous for arrears of pay. At last, with the suppression of
the Benares revolt, it seemed to Hastings and the Wazir that
the time had come for resuming the Jaghirs, and making the
Begums disgorge their ill-gotten wealth. In accordance with
the Treaty of Chunar, both these objects were carried out by
the Wazir's orders, with just enough of compulsion to give
Hastings' enemies a handle for the slanders and
misrepresentations which lent so cruel a point to Sheridan's
dazzling oratory, and to one of the most scathing passages in
Macaulay's most popular essay. There are some points, no
doubt, in Hastings' character and career about which honest
men may still hold different opinions. But on all the
weightier issues here mentioned there ought to be no room for
further controversy. It is no longer possible to contend, for
instance, that Hastings agreed, for a handsome bribe, to help
in exterminating the innocent people of Rohilkhand; that he
prompted Impey to murder Nand-Kumar; that any desire for
plunder led him to fasten a quarrel upon Chait Singh; or that
he engaged with the Oudh Wazir in a plot to rob the Wazir's
own mother of vast property secured to her under a solemn
compact, 'formally guaranteed by the Government of Bengal.'"
L. J. Trotter,
Warren Hastings and his Libellers
(Westminster Review, March, 1891).
ALSO IN:
W. M. Torrens,
Empire in Asia: How we came by it,
chapters 7-11.
H. E. Busteed,
Echoes from Old Calcutta.
G. W. Forrest,
The Administration of Warren Hastings.
G. R. Gleig,
Memoirs of Warren Hastings,
volume 1, chapters 8-14, and volume 2.
INDIA: A. D. 1780-1783.
The second war with Hyder Ali (Second Mysore War).
"The brilliant successes obtained by the English over the
French in Hindostan at the beginning of the war had made all
direct competition between the two nations in that country
impossible, but it was still in the power of the French to
stimulate the hostility of the native princes, and the ablest
of all these, Hyder Ali, the great ruler of Mysore, was once
more in the field. Since his triumph over the English, in
1769, he had acquired much additional territory from the
Mahrattas. He had immensely strengthened his military forces,
both in numbers and discipline. … For some years he showed
no wish to quarrel with the English, but when a Mahratta chief
invaded his territory they refused to give him the assistance
they were bound by the express terms of the treaty of 1769 to
afford, they rejected or evaded more than one subsequent
proposal of alliance, and they pursued a native policy in some
instances hostile to his interest.
{1725}
As a great native sovereign, too, he had no wish to see the
balance of power established by the rivalry between the
British and French destroyed. … Mysore was swarming with
French adventurers. The condition of Europe made it scarcely
possible that England could send any fresh forces, and Hyder
Ali had acquired a strength which appeared irresistible.
Ominous rumours passed over the land towards the close of
1779, but they were little heeded, and no serious preparations
had been made, when in July, 1780, the storm suddenly burst.
At the head of an army of at least 90,000 men, including
30,000 horsemen, 100 cannon, many European officers and
soldiers, and crowds of desperate adventurers from all parts
of India, Hyder Ali descended upon the Carnatic and devastated
a vast tract of country round Madras. Many forts and towns
were invested, captured, or surrendered. The Nabob and some of
his principal officers acted with gross treachery or
cowardice, and in spite of the devastations native sympathies
were strongly with the invaders. … Madras was for a time in
imminent danger. A few forts commanded by British officers
held out valiantly, but the English had only two considerable
bodies of men, commanded respectively by Colonel Baillie and
by Sir Hector Munro, in the field. They endeavoured to effect
a junction, but Hyder succeeded in attacking separately the
small army of Colonel Baillie, consisting of rather more than
3,700 men, and it was totally defeated [September 10], 2,000
men being left on the field. Munro only saved himself from a
similar fate by a rapid retreat, abandoning his baggage, and
much of his ammunition. Arcot, which was the capital of the
Nabob, and which contained vast military stores, was besieged
for six weeks, and surrendered in the beginning of November.
Velore, Wandewash, Permacoil, and Chingliput, four of the
chief strongholds in the Carnatic, were invested. A French
fleet with French troops was daily expected, and it appeared
almost certain that the British power would be extinguished in
Madras, if not in the whole of Hindostan. It was saved by the
energy of the Governor-General, Warren Hastings, who, by
extraordinary efforts, collected a large body of Sepoys and a
few Europeans in Bengal, and sent them with great rapidity to
Madras, under the command of Sir Eyre Coote, who had proved
himself twenty years before scarcely second in military genius
to Clive himself. I do not propose to relate in detail the
long and tangled story of the war that followed. … It is
sufficient to say that Coote soon found himself at the head of
about 7,200 men, of whom 1,400 were Europeans; that he
succeeded in relieving Wandewash, and obliging Hyder Ali to
abandon for the present the siege of Velore; that the French
fleet, which arrived off the coast in January, 1781, was found
to contain no troops, and that on July 1, 1781, Coote, with an
army of about 8,000 men, totally defeated forces at least
eight times as numerous, commanded by Hyder himself, in the
great battle of Porto Novo. … The war raged over the
Carnatic, over Tanjore, in the Dutch settlements to the south
of Tanjore, on the opposite Malabar coast, and on the coast of
Ceylon, while at the same time another and independent
struggle was proceeding with the Mahrattas. … The coffers at
Calcutta were nearly empty, and it was in order to replenish
them that Hastings committed some of the acts which were
afterwards the subjects of his impeachment. … By the skill
and daring of a few able men, of whom Hastings, Coote, Munro,
and Lord Macartney were the most prominent, the storm was
weathered. Hyder Ali died in December, 1782, about four months
before Sir Eyre Coote. The peace of 1782 withdrew France and
Holland from the contest, and towards the close of 1783,
Tippoo, the son of Hyder Ali, consented to negotiate a peace,
which was signed in the following March. Its terms were a
mutual restoration of all conquests, and in this, as in so
many other great wars, neither of the contending parties
gained a single advantage by all the bloodshed, the
expenditure, the desolation, and the misery of a struggle of
nearly four years."
W. E. H. Lecky,
History of England in the 18th Century,
chapter 14 (volume 5).
"The centre and heart of the English power lay in Bengal,
which the war never reached at all, and which was governed by
a man of rare talent and organizing capacity. No Anglo-Indian
government of that time could carry on a campaign by war
loans, as in Europe; the cost had to be provided out of
revenue, or by requiring subsidies from allied native rulers;
and it was Bengal that furnished not only the money and the
men, but also the chief political direction and military
leadership which surmounted the difficulties and repaired the
calamities of the English in the western and southern
Presidencies. And when at last the Marathas made peace, when
Hyder Ali died, and Suffren, with all his courage and genius,
could not master the English fleet in the Bay of Bengal, there
could be no doubt that the war had proved the strength of the
English position in India, had tested the firmness of its
foundation. … With the termination of this war ended the
only period in the long contest between England and the native
powers, during which our position in India was for a time
seriously jeoparded. That the English dominion emerged from
this prolonged struggle uninjured, though not unshaken, is a
result due to the political intrepidity of Warren Hastings.
… Hastings had no aristocratic connexions or parliamentary
influence at a time when the great families and the House of
Commons held immense power; he was surrounded by enemies in
his own Council; and his immediate masters, the East India
Company, gave him very fluctuating support. Fiercely opposed
by his own colleagues, and very ill obeyed by the subordinate
Presidencies, he had to maintain the Company's commercial
establishments, and at the same time to find money for
carrying on distant and impolitic wars in which he had been
involved by blunders at Madras or Bombay. These funds he had
been expected to provide out of current revenues, after buying
and despatching the merchandise on which the company's home
dividends depended; for the resource of raising public loans,
so freely used in England, was not available to him. He was
thus inevitably driven to the financial transactions, at
Benares and Lucknow, that were now so bitterly stigmatized as
crimes by men who made no allowance for a perilous situation
in a distant land, or for the weight of enormous national
interests committed to the charge of the one man capable of
sustaining them. When the storm had blown over in India, and
he had piloted his vessel into calm water, he was sacrificed
with little or no hesitation to party exigencies in England;
the Ministry would have recalled him; they consented to his
impeachment; they left him to be baited by the Opposition and
to be ruined by the law's delay, by the incredible
procrastination and the obsolete formalities of a seven years'
trial before the House of Lords."
Sir A. Lyall,
Rise of the British Dominion in India,
chapter 11, section 2.
ALSO IN:
Meer Hussein Ali Khan Kirmani,
History of Hydur Naik,
chapters 27-31.
G. B. Malleson,
Decisive Battles of India,
chapter 8.
L. B. Bowring,
Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan,
chapters 14-15.
{1726}
INDIA: A. D. 1785-1793.
State of India.
Extent of English rule.
Administration of Lord Cornwallis.
War with Tippoo Saib (Third Mysore War).
The "Permanent Settlement" of Land Revenue in Bengal,
and its fruit.
"When Warren Hastings left India, the Mogul Empire was simply
the phantom of a name. The warlike tribes of the north-west,
Sikhs, Rajpoots, Jats, were henceforth independent; but the
Rohillas of the north-east had been subdued and almost
exterminated. Of the three greatest Soobahs or vice-royalties
of the Mogul empire, at one time practically independent, that
of Bengal had wholly disappeared, those of Oude and the Deckan
had sunk into dependence on a foreign power, were maintained
by the aid of foreign mercenaries. The only two native powers
that remained were, the Mahrattas, and the newly-risen
Mussulman dynasty of Mysore. The former were still divided
between the great chieftaincies of the Peshwa, Scindia,
Holkar, the Guicowar, and the Boslas of Berar. But the
supremacy of the Peshwa was on the wane; that of Scindia, on
the contrary, in the ascendant. Scindia ruled in the north; he
had possession of the emperor's person, of Delhi, the old
Mussulman capital. In the south, Hyder Ali and Tippoo [son of
Hyder Ali, whom he had succeeded in 1782], Sultan of Mysore,
had attained to remarkable power. They were dangerous to the
Mahrattas, dangerous to the Nizam, dangerous, lastly, to the
English. But the rise of the last-named power was the great
event of the period. … They had won for themselves the three
great provinces of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, besides
Benares,—forming a large compact mass of territory to the
north-east. They had, farther down the east coast, the
province of the Northern Circars, and farther still, the
jagheer [land grant], of Madras; on the west, again, a large
stretch of territory at the southern extremity of the
peninsula. The two Mussulman sovereigns of Oude and Hyderabad
were their dependent allies; they administered the country of
the Nawab of the Carnatic, besides having hosts of smaller
potentates under their protection. … The appointed successor
to Hastings was Lord Macartney. … He lost his office,
however, by hesitating to accept it, and going to England to
urge conditions. … The great military event of Lord
Cornwallis's government was the third Mysore war. It began
with some disputes about the petty Raja of Cherika, from whom
the English had farmed the customs of Tellicherry, and taken,
in security for advances, a district called Randaterra, and by
Tippoo's attack upon the lines of the Raja of Travancore, an
ally of the English, consisting of a ditch, wall, and other
defences, on an extent of about thirty miles. Tippoo was,
however, repelled with great slaughter in an attack on the
town (1789). Hearing this, Lord Cornwallis at once entered
into treaties with the Nizam and the Peshwa for a joint war
upon Mysore; all new conquests to be equally divided, all
Tippoo's own conquests from the contracting powers to be
restored. After a first inconclusive campaign, in which,
notwithstanding the skill of General Meadows, the advantage
rather remained to Tippoo, who, amongst other things, gave a
decided check to Colonel Floyd (1790), Lord Cornwallis took
the command in person, and carried Bangalore by assault, with
great loss to both parties, but a tremendous carnage of the
besieged. However, so wretched had been the English
preparations, that, the cattle being 'reduced to skeletons,
and scarcely able to move their own weight,' Lord Cornwallis,
after advancing to besiege Seringapatam, was forced to retreat
and to destroy the whole of his battering-train and other
equipments; whilst General Abercrombie, who was advancing in
the same direction from the Malabar coast, had to do the same
(1791). A force of Mahrattas came in, well appointed and well
provided, but too late to avert these disasters. The next
campaign was more successful. It began by the taking of
several of the hill-forts forming the western barrier of
Mysore. … On the 5th February, 1792, however, Lord
Cornwallis appeared before Seringapatam, situated in an island
formed by the Cauvery: the fort and outworks were provided
with 300 pieces of cannon; the fortified camp, outside the
river, by six redoubts, with more than 100 pieces of heavy
artillery. Tippoo's army consisted of 6,000 cavalry and 50,000
infantry, himself commanding. This first siege, which is
celebrated in Indian warfare, continued with complete success
on the English side till the 24th. 10,000 subjects of Coorg,
whom Tippoo had enlisted by force, deserted. At last, when the
whole island was carried and all preparations made for the
siege, Tippoo made peace. The English allies had such
confidence in Lord Cornwallis, that they left him entire
discretion as to the terms. They were,—that Tippoo should
give up half of his territory, pay a large sum for war
expenses, and give up two of his sons as hostages. The ceded
territory was divided between the allies, the Company
obtaining a large strip of the Malabar coast, extending
eastward to the Carnatic. … Meanwhile, on the breaking out
of war between England and the French Republic, the French
settlements in India were all again annexed (1792). Lord
Cornwallis now applied himself to questions of internal
government. Properly speaking, there was no English Government
as yet. Mr. Kaye, the brilliant apologist of the East India
Company, says, of Lord Cornwallis, that 'he gathered up the
scattered fragments of government which he found, and reduced
them to one comprehensive system.' He organized the
administration of criminal justice, reorganized the police. He
separated the connection of the revenues from the
administration of justice, organizing civil justice in turn.
… He next proceeded to organize the financial system of the
Company's government. … Hence the famous 'Permanent
Settlement' of Lord Cornwallis (22nd March, 1793)."
J. M. Ludlow,
British India,
lecture 9 (volume 1).
{1727}
"In 1793 the so-called Permanent Settlement of the Land Revenue
was introduced. We found in Bengal, when we succeeded to the
Government, a class of middle-men, called Zemindars [or
Zamindars-see, also, TALUKDARS], who collected the land
revenue and the taxes, and we continued to employ them. As a
matter of convenience and expediency, but not of right, the
office of zemindar was often hereditary. The zemindars had
never been in any sense the owners of the land, but it was
supposed by Lord Cornwallis and the English rulers of the time
that it would be an excellent thing for Bengal to have a class
of landlords something like those of England; the zemindars
were the only people that seemed available for the purpose,
and they were declared to be the proprietors of the land. It
was by no means intended that injustice should thus be done to
others. Excepting the State, there was only one great class,
that of the ryots or actual cultivators, which, according to
immemorial custom, could be held to possess permanent rights
in the land. The existence of those rights was recognised,
and, as it was supposed, guarded by the law. … There has
been much dispute as to the exact nature of the rights given
to the zemindars, but everyone agrees that it was not the
intention of the authors of the Permanent Settlement to
confiscate anything which, according to the customs of the
country, had belonged to the cultivators. The right of
property given to the zemindars was a portion of those rights
which had always been exercised by the State, and of which the
State was at liberty to dispose; it was not intended that they
should receive anything else. The land revenue, representing
the share of the produce or rental to which the State was
entitled, was fixed in perpetuity. The ryots were to continue
to hold their lands permanently at the 'rates established in
the purgunnah;' when the amount of these rates was disputed it
was to be settled by the courts; so long as rents at those
rates were paid, the ryot could not be evicted. The intention
was to secure to the ryot fixity of tenure and fixity of rent.
Unfortunately, these rights were only secured upon paper. …
The consequences at the present time are these:—Even if it
be assumed that the share of the rent which the State can
wisely take is smaller than the share which any Government,
Native or English, has ever taken or proposed to take in
India, the amount now received by the State from the land in
Bengal must be held to fall short of what it might be by a sum
that can hardly be less than £5,000,000 a year; this is a
moderate computation; probably the loss is much more. This is
given away in return for no service to the State or to the
public; the zemindars are merely the receivers of rent; with
exceptions so rare as to deserve no consideration, they take
no part in the improvement of the land, and, until a very few
years ago, they bore virtually no share of the public burdens.
The result of these proceedings of the last century, to the
maintenance of which for ever the faith of the British
Government is said to have been pledged, is that the poorer
classes in poorer provinces have to make good to the State the
millions which have been thrown away in Bengal. If this were
all, it would be bad enough, but worse remains to be told. …
'The original intention of the framers of the Permanent
Settlement (I am quoting from Sir George Campbell) was to
record all rights. The Canoongoes (District Registrars) and
Putwarees (Village Accountants) were to register all holdings,
all transfers, all rent-rolls, and all receipts and payments;
and every five years there was to be filed in the public
offices a complete register of all land tenures. But the task
was a difficult one; there was delay in carrying it out. …
The putwarees fell into disuse or became the mere servants of
the zemindars; the canoongoes were abolished. No record of the
rights of the ryots and inferior holders was ever made, and
even the quinquennial register of superior rights, which was
maintained for a time, fell into disuse.' … The consequences
of the Permanent Settlement did not become immediately
prominent. … But, as time went on, and population and wealth
increased, as cultivators were more readily found, and custom
began to give way to competition, the position of the ryots
became worse and that of the zemindars became stronger. Other
circumstances helped the process of confiscation of the rights
of the peasantry. … The confiscation of the rights of the
ryots has reached vast proportions. In 1793 the rental left to
the zemindars under the Permanent Settlement, after payment of
the land revenue, is supposed not to have exceeded £400,000;
according to some estimates it was less. If the intentions of
the Government had been carried out, it was to the ryots that
the greater portion of any future increase in the annual value
of the land would have belonged, in those parts at least of
the province which were at that time well cultivated. It is
not possible to state with confidence the present gross annual
rental of the landlords of Bengal. An imperfect valuation made
some years ago showed it to be £13,000,000. It is now called
£17,000,000, but there can be little doubt that it is much
more. Thus, after deducting the land revenue, which is about
£3,800,000, the net rental has risen from £400,000 in the last
century to more than £13,000,000 at the present time. No
portion of this increase has been due to the action of the
zemindars. It has been due to the industry of the ryots, to
whom the greater part of it rightfully belonged, to the
peaceful progress of the country, and to the expenditure of
the State, an expenditure mainly defrayed from the taxation of
poorer provinces. If ever there was an 'unearned increment,'
it is this."
Sir J. Strachey,
India,
lecture 12.
ALSO IN:
J. W. Kaye,
The Administration of the East India Co.,
part 2, chapter 2.
J. Mill,
History of British India,
book 6, chapter 4 (volume 5).
W. S. Seton-Karr,
The Marquess Cornwallis,
chapter 2.
Sir R. Temple,
James Thomason,
chapter 9.
INDIA: A. D. 1785-1795.
The Impeachment and Trial of Warren Hastings.
"Warren Hastings returned to England in the summer of 1785,
and met with a distinguished reception. "I find myself," he
wrote to a friend, "every where and universally treated with
evidences, apparent even to my own observation, that I possess
the good opinion of my country." But underneath this
superficial "good opinion" there existed a moral feeling which
had been outraged by the unscrupulous measures of the
Governor-General of India, and which began soon to speak aloud
through the eloquent lips of Edmund Burke. Joined in the
movement by Fox and Sheridan, Burke laid charges before
Parliament which forced the House of Commons, in the session
of 1787 to order the impeachment of Hastings before the Lords.
On the 13th of February, 1788, the sittings of the Court
commenced.
{1728}
There have been spectacles more dazzling to the eye, more
gorgeous with jewellery and cloth of gold, more attractive to
grown-up children, than that which was then exhibited at
Westminster; but, perhaps, there never was a spectacle so well
calculated to strike a highly cultivated, a reflecting, an
imaginative mind. All the various kinds of interest which
belong to the near and to the distant, to the present and to
the past, were collected on one spot and in one hour. All the
talents and all the accomplishments which are developed by
liberty and civilisation were now displayed, with every
advantage that could be derived both from co-operation and
from contrast. Every step in the proceedings carried the mind
either backward, through many troubled centuries, to the days
when the foundations of our constitution were laid; or far
away, over boundless seas and deserts, to dusky nations living
under strange stars, worshipping strange gods, and writing
strange characters from right to left. The High Court of
Parliament was to sit, according to forms handed down from the
days of the Plantagenets, on an Englishman accused of
exercising tyranny over the lord of the holy city of Benares,
and over the ladies of the princely house of Oude. The place
was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall of William
Rufus, the hall which had resounded with acclamations at the
inauguration of thirty kings, the hall which had witnessed the
just sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of Somers, the
hall where the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment awed
and melted a victorious party inflamed with just resentment,
the hall where Charles had confronted the High Court of
Justice with the placid courage which has half redeemed his
fame. Neither military nor civil pomp was wanting. The avenues
were lined with grenadiers. The streets were kept clear by
cavalry. The peers, robed in gold and ermine, were marshalled
by the heralds under Garter King-at-arms. The judges in their
vestments of state attended to give advice on points of law.
Near a hundred and seventy lords, three fourths of the Upper
House as the Upper House then was, walked in solemn order from
their usual place of assembling to the tribunal. … The grey
old walls were hung with scarlet. The long galleries were
crowded by an audience such as has rarely excited the fears or
the emulations of an orator. There were gathered together,
from all parts of a great, free, enlightened, and prosperous
empire, grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, the
representatives of every science and of every art. … The
Serjeants made proclamation. Hastings advanced to the bar, and
bent his knee. The culprit was indeed not unworthy of that
great presence. He had ruled an extensive and populous
country, had made laws and treaties, had sent forth armies,
had set up and pulled down princes. And in his high place he
had so borne himself, that all had feared him, that most had
loved him, and that hatred itself could deny him no title to
glory, except virtue. He looked like a great man, and not like
a bad man. … His counsel accompanied him, men all of whom
were afterwards raised by their talents and learning to the
highest posts in their profession, the bold and strong-minded
Law, afterwards Chief Justice of the King's Bench; the more
humane and eloquent Dallas, afterwards Chief Justice of the
Common Pleas; and Plomer who, near twenty years later,
successfully conducted in the same high court the defence of
Lord Melville, and subsequently became Vice-chancellor and
Master of the Rolls. But neither the culprit nor his advocates
attracted so much notice as the accusers. In the midst of the
blaze of red drapery, a space had been fitted up with green
benches and tables for the Commons. The managers, with Burke
at their head, appeared in full dress. The collectors of
gossip did not fail to remark that even Fox, generally so
regardless of his appearance, had paid to the illustrious
tribunal the compliment of wearing a bag and sword. Pitt had
refused to be one of the conductors of the impeachment; and
his commanding, copious, and sonorous eloquence was wanting to
that great muster of various talents. … The charges and the
answers of Hastings were first read. The ceremony occupied two
whole days, and was rendered less tedious than it would
otherwise have been by the silver voice and just emphasis of
Cowper, the clerk of the court, a near relation of the amiable
poet. On the third day Burke rose. Four sittings were occupied
by his opening speech, which was intended to be a general
introduction to all the charges. With an exuberance of thought
and a splendour of diction, which more than satisfied the
highly raised expectation of the audience, he described the
character and institutions of the natives of India, recounted
the circumstances in which the Asiatic empire of Britain had
originated, and set forth the constitution of the Company and
of the English presidencies. … When the Court sat again, Mr.
Fox, assisted by Mr. Grey, opened the charge respecting Cheyte
Sing, and several days were spent in reading papers and
hearing witnesses. The next article was that relating to the
Princesses of Oude. The conduct of this part of the case was
intrusted to Sheridan. The curiosity of the public to hear him
was unbounded. His sparkling and highly finished declamation
lasted two days; but the Hall was crowded to suffocation
during the whole time. It was said that fifty guineas had been
paid for a single ticket. Sheridan, when he concluded,
contrived, with a knowledge of stage effect which his father
might have envied, to sink back, as if exhausted, into the
arms of Burke, who hugged him with the energy of generous
admiration. June was now far advanced. The session could not
last much longer; and the progress which had been made in the
impeachment was not very satisfactory. There were twenty
charges. On two only of these had even the case for the
prosecution been heard; and it was now a year since Hastings
had been admitted to bail. The interest taken by the public in
the trial was great when the Court began to sit, and rose to
the height when Sheridan spoke on the charge relating to the
Begums. From that time the excitement went down fast. The
spectacle had lost the attraction of novelty. The great
displays of rhetoric were over. … The trial in the Hall went
on languidly. In the session of 1788, when the proceedings had
the interest of novelty, and when the Peers had little other
business before them, only thirty-five days were given to the
impeachment. In 1789 … during the whole year only
seventeen days were given to the case of Hastings. … At
length, in the spring of 1795, the decision was pronounced,
near eight years after Hastings had been brought by the
Serjeant-at-arms of the Commons to the bar of the Lords.
{1729}
… Only twenty-nine Peers voted. Of these only six found
Hastings guilty on the charges relating to Cheyte Sing and to
the Begums. On other charges, the majority in his favour was
still greater. On some he was unanimously absolved. He was
then called to the bar, was informed from the woolsack that
the Lords had acquitted him, and was solemnly discharged. He
bowed respectfully and retired. We have said that the decision
had been fully expected. It was also generally approved. …
It was thought, and not without reason, that, even if he was
guilty, he was still an ill-used man, and that an impeachment
of eight years was more than a sufficient punishment. It was
also felt that, though, in the ordinary course of criminal
law, a defendant is not allowed to set off his good actions
against his crimes, a great political cause should be tried on
different principles, and that a man who had governed an
empire during thirteen years might have done some very
reprehensible things, and yet might be on the whole deserving
of rewards and honours rather than of fine and imprisonment."
Lord Macaulay,
Warren Hastings (Essays).
"The trial had several beneficial results. It cleared off a
cloud of misconceptions, calumnies, exaggerations, and false
notions generally on both sides; it fixed and promulgated the
standard which the English people would in future insist upon
maintaining in their Indian administration; it bound down the
East India Company to better behaviour; it served as an
example and a salutary warning, and it relieved the national
conscience. But the attempt to make Hastings a sacrifice and a
burnt-offering for the sins of the people; the process of
loading him with curses and driving him away into the
wilderness; of stoning him with every epithet and metaphor
that the English language could supply for heaping ignominy on
his head; of keeping him seven years under an impeachment that
menaced him with ruin and infamy—these were blots upon the
prosecution and wide aberrations from the true course of
justice which disfigured the aspect of the trial, distorted
its aim, and had much to do with bringing it to the lame and
impotent conclusion that Burke so bitterly denounced."
Sir A. Lyall,
Warren Hastings,
chapter 9.
ALSO IN:
E. Burke,
Works,
volumes 8-12.
Speeches of Managers and Counsel
in the Trial of Warren Hastings,
edited by E. A. Bond.
INDIA: A. D. 1798-1805.
The administration and imperial policy of the Marquis Wellesley.
Treaty with the Nizam.
Overthrow and death of Tippoo, Sultan of Mysore.
War with the Mahrattas.
Assaye and Laswari.
Territorial acquisitions.
"The period of Sir John Shore's rule as Governor-General, from
1793 to 1798 [after which he became Lord Teignmouth], was
uneventful. In 1798, Lord Mornington, better known as the
Marquis of Wellesley, arrived in India, already inspired with
imperial projects which were destined to change the map of the
country. Mornington was the friend and favourite of Pitt, from
whom he is thought to have derived his far-reaching political
vision, and his antipathy to the French name. From the first
he laid down as his guiding principle, that the English must
be the one paramount power in the peninsula, and that Native
princes could only retain the insignia of sovereignty by
surrendering their political independence. The history of
India since his time has been but the gradual development of
this policy, which received its finishing touch when Queen
Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India on the 1st of
January, 1877. To frustrate the possibility of a French
invasion of India, led by Napoleon in person, was the
governing idea of Wellesley's foreign policy. France at this
time, and for many years later, filled the place afterwards
occupied by Russia in the minds of Indian statesmen. Nor was
the danger so remote as might now be thought. French regiments
guarded and overawed the Nizam of Haidarabad. The soldiers of
Sindhia, the military head of the Marhatta Confederacy, were
disciplined and led by French adventurers. Tipu Sultan of
Mysore carried on a secret correspondence with the French
Directorate, allowed a tree of liberty to be planted in his
dominions, and enrolled himself in a republican club as
'Citizen Tipu.' The islands of Mauritius and Bourbon afforded
a convenient half-way rendezvous for French intrigue and for
the assembling of a hostile expedition. Above all, Napoleon
Buonaparte was then in Egypt, dreaming of the conquests of
Alexander, and no man knew in what direction he might turn his
hitherto unconquered legions. Wellesley conceived the scheme
of crushing for ever the French hopes in Asia, by placing
himself at the head of a great Indian confederacy. In Lower
Bengal, the sword of Clive and the policy of Warren Hastings
had made the English paramount. Before the end of the century,
our power was consolidated from the seaboard to Benares, high
up the Gangetic valley. … In 1801, the treaty of Lucknow
made over to the British the Doab, or fertile tract between
the Ganges and the Jumna, together with Rohilkhand. In
Southern India, our possessions were chiefly confined, before
Lord Wellesley, to the coast Districts of Madras and Bombay.
Wellesley resolved to make the British supreme as far as Delhi
in Northern India, and to compel the great powers of the south
to enter into subordinate relations to the Company's
government. The intrigues of the Native princes gave him his
opportunity for carrying out this plan without breach of
faith. The time had arrived when the English must either
become supreme in India, or be driven out of it. The Mughal
Empire was completely broken up; and the sway had to pass
either to the local Muhammadan governors of that empire, or to
the Hindu Confederacy represented by the Marhattas, or to the
British. Lord Wellesley determined that it should pass to the
British. His work in Northern India was at first easy. The
treaty of Lucknow in 1801 made us territorial rulers as far as
the heart of the present North-Western Provinces, and
established our political influence in Oudh. Beyond those
limits, the northern branches of the Marhattas practically
held sway, with the puppet emperor in their hands. Lord
Wellesley left them untouched for a few years, until the
second Marhatta war (1802-1804) gave him an opportunity for
dealing effectively with their nation as a whole. In Southern
India, he saw that the Nizam at Haidarabad stood in need of
his protection, and he converted him into a useful follower
throughout the succeeding struggle. The other Muhammadan power
of the south, Tipu Sultan of Mysore, could not be so easily
handled.
{1730}
Lord Wellesley resolved to crush him, and had ample
provocation for so doing. The third power of Southern
India—namely, the Marhatta Confederacy—was so loosely
organized, that Lord Wellesley seems at first to have hoped to
live on terms with it. When several years of fitful alliance
had convinced him that he had to choose between the supremacy
of the Marhattas or of the British in Southern India, he did
not hesitate to decide. Lord Wellesley first addressed himself
to the weakest of the three southern powers, the Nizam of
Haidarabad. Here he won a diplomatic success, which turned a
possible rival into a subservient ally. The French battalions
at Haidarabad were disbanded, and the Nizam bound himself by
treaty not to take any European into his service without the
consent of the English Government,—a clause since inserted in
every engagement entered into with Native powers. Wellesley
next turned the whole weight of his resources against Tipu,
whom Cornwallis had defeated, but not subdued. Tipu's
intrigues with the French were laid bare, and he was given an
opportunity of adhering to the new subsidiary system. On his
refusal, war was declared, and Wellesley came down in
viceregal state to Madras to organize the expedition in
person, and to watch over the course of events. One English
army marched into Mysore from Madras, accompanied by a
contingent from the Nizam. Another advanced from the western
coast. Tipu, after a feeble resistance in the field, retired
into Seringapatam, and, when his capital was stormed, died
fighting bravely in the breach (1799). Since the battle of
Plassey, no event so greatly impressed the Native imagination
as the capture of Seringapatam, which won for General Harris a
peerage, and for Wellesley an Irish marquisate. In dealing
with the territories of Tipu, Wellesley acted with moderation.
The central portion, forming the old state of Mysore, was
restored to an infant representative of the Hindu Rajas, whom
Haidar Ali had dethroned; the rest of Tipu's dominion was
partitioned between the Nizam, the Marhattas, and the English.
At about the same time, the Karnatic, or the part of
South-Eastern India ruled by the Nawab of Arcot, and also the
principality of Tanjore, were placed under direct British
administration, thus constituting the Madras Presidency almost
as it has existed to the present day. … The Marhattas had
been the nominal allies of the English in both their wars with
Tipu. But they had not rendered active assistance, nor were
they secured to the English side as the Nizam now was. The
Marhatta powers at this time were five in number. The
recognised head of the confederacy was the Peshwa of Poona,
who ruled the hill country of the Western Ghats, the cradle of
the Marhatta race. The fertile Province of Guzerat was
annually harried by the horsemen of the Gaekwar of Baroda. In
Central India, two military leaders, Sindhia of Gwalior and
Holkar of Indore, alternately held the pre-eminence. Towards
the east, the Bhonsla Raja of Nagpur reigned from Berar to the
coast of Orissa. Wellesley laboured to bring these several
Marhatta powers within the net of his subsidiary system. In
1802, the necessities of the Peshwa, who had been defeated by
Holkar, and driven as a fugitive into British territory,
induced him to sign the treaty of Bassein. By this he pledged
himself to the British to hold communications with no other
power, European or Native, and granted to us Districts for the
maintenance of a subsidiary force. This greatly extended the
English territorial influence in the Bombay Presidency. But it
led to the second Marhatta war, as neither Sindhia nor the
Raja of Nagpur would tolerate the Peshwa's betrayal of the
Marhatta independence. The campaigns which followed are
perhaps the most glorious in the history of the British arms
in India. The general plan, and the adequate provision of
resources, were due to the Marquis of Wellesley, as also the
indomitable spirit which refused to admit of defeat. The
armies were led by Sir Arthur Wellesley (afterwards Duke of
Wellington) and General (afterwards Lord) Lake. Wellesley
operated in the Deccan, where in a few short months, he won
the decisive victories of Assaye [September 23, 1803] and
Argaum [November 28], and captured Ahmednagar. Lake's campaign
in Hindustan was equally brilliant, although it has received
less notice from historians. He won pitched battles at Aligarh
[August 29] and Laswari [November 1, 1803], and took the
cities of Delhi and Agra. He scattered the French troops of
Sindhia, and at the same time stood forward as the champion of
the Mughal Emperor in his hereditary capital. Before the end
of 1803, both Sindhia and the Bhonsla Raja of Nagpur sued for
peace. Sindhia ceded all claims to the territory north of the
Jumna, and left the blind old Emperor Shah Alam once more
under British protection. The Bhonsla forfeited Orissa to the
English, who had already occupied it with a flying column in
1803, and Berar to the Nizam, who gained fresh territory by
every act of complaisance to the British Government. … The
concluding years of Wellesley's rule were occupied with a
series of operations against Holkar, which brought little
credit on the British name. The disastrous retreat of Colonel
Monson through Central India (1804) recalled memories of the
convention of Wargaum, and of the destruction of Colonel
Baillie's force by Haidar Ali. The repulse of Lake in person
at the siege of Bhartpur (Bhurtpore) is memorable as an
instance of a British army in India having to turn back with
its object unaccomplished (1805). Bhartpur was not finally
taken till 1827. Lord Wellesley during his six years of office
carried out almost every part of his territorial scheme. In
Northern India, Lord Lake's campaigns brought the
North-Western provinces (the ancient Madhyadesa) under British
rule, together with the custody of the puppet emperor. The new
Districts were amalgamated with those previously acquired from
the Nawab Wazir of Oudh into the 'Ceded and Conquered
Provinces.' This partition of Northern India remained till the
Sikh wars of 1844 and 1847 gave us the Punjab."
W. W. Hunter,
Brief History of the Indian People,
chapter 13.
ALSO IN:
W. H. Maxwell,
Life of the Duke of Wellington,
volume 1, chapters 2-12.
J. M. Wilson.
Memoir of Wellington,
volume 1, chapters 2-9.
G. B. Malleson,
Decisive Battles of India,
chapters 9-10.
W. H. Hutton,
The Marquess Wellesley.
J. S. Cotton,
Mountstuart Elphinstone,
chapter 4.
{1731}
INDIA: A. D. 1805-1816.
Reversal of Lord Wellesley's policy.
Sepoy revolt at Vellore.
Influence established with Runjeet Singh and the Sikhs.
Conquest of the Mauritius.
The Ghorka War.
"The retreat of Monson was not only a disastrous blow to
British prestige, but ruined for a while the reputation of
Lord Wellesley. Because a Mahratta freebooter had broken loose
in Hindustan, the Home authorities imagined that all the
Mahratta powers had risen against the imperial policy of the
Governor-General. Lord Wellesley was recalled from his post,
and Lord Cornwallis was sent out to take his place, to reverse
the policy of his illustrious predecessor, to scuttle out of
Western Hindustan, to restore all the ceded territories, to
surrender all the captured fortresses, and to abandon large
tracts of country to be plundered and devastated by the
Mahrattas, as they had been from the days of Sivaji to those
of Wellesley and Lake. Before Lord Cornwallis reached Bengal
the political outlook had brightened. … But Lord Cornwallis
was sixty-seven years of age, and had lost the nerve which he
had displayed in his wars against Tippu; and he would have
ignored the turn of the tide, and persisted in falling back on
the old policy of conciliation and non-intervention, had not
death cut short his career before he had been ten weeks in the
country. Sir George Barlow, a Bengal civilian, succeeded for a
while to the post of Governor-General, as a provisional
arrangement. He had been a member of Council under both
Wellesley and Cornwallis, and he halted between the two. He
refused to restore the conquered territories to Sindia and the
Bhonsla, but he gave back the Indore principality to Holkar,
together with the captured fortresses. Worst of all, he
annulled most of the protective treaties with the Rajput
princes on the ground that they had deserted the British
government during Monson's retreat from Jaswant Rao Holkar.
For some years the policy of the British government was a
half-hearted system of non-intervention. … The Mahratta
princes were left to plunder and collect chout [a blackmail
extortion, levied by the Mahrattas for a century] in
Rajputana, and practically to make war on each other, so long
as they respected the territories of the British government
and its allies. … All this while an under-current of
intrigue was at work between Indian courts, which served in
the end to revive wild hopes of getting rid of British
supremacy, and rekindling the old aspirations for war and
rapine. In 1806 the peace of India was broken by an alarm from
a very different quarter. In those days India was so remote
from the British Isles that the existence of the British
government mainly depended on the loyalty of its sepoy armies.
Suddenly it was discovered that the Madras army was on the
brink of mutiny. The British authorities at Madras had
introduced an obnoxious head-dress resembling a European hat,
in the place of the old time-honoured turban, and had,
moreover, forbidden the sepoys to appear on parade with
earrings and caste marks. India was astounded by a revolt of
the Madras sepoys at the fortress of Vellore, about eight
miles to the westward of Arcot. … The garrison at Vellore
consisted of about 400 Europeans and 1,500 sepoys. At
midnight, without warning, the sepoys rose in mutiny. One body
fired on the European barracks until half the soldiers were
killed or wounded. Another body fired on the houses of the
British officers, and shot them down as they rushed out to
know the cause of the uproar. All this while provisions were
distributed amongst the sepoys by the Mysore princes, and the
flag of Mysore was hoisted over the fortress. Fortunately the
news was carried to Arcot, where Colonel Gillespie commanded a
British garrison. Gillespie at once galloped to Vellore with a
troop of British dragoons and two field guns. The gates of
Vellore were blown open; the soldiers rushed in; 400 mutineers
were cut down, and the outbreak was over. … In 1807 Lord
Minto succeeded Barlow as Governor-General. He broke the spell
of non-intervention. … Lord Minto's main work was to keep
Napoleon and the French out of India. The north-west frontier
was still vulnerable, but the Afghans had retired from the
Punjab, and the once famous Runjeet Singh had founded a Sikh
kingdom between the Indus and the Sutlej. As far as the
British were concerned, the Sikhs formed a barrier against the
Afghans; and Runjeet Singh was apparently friendly, for he had
refused to shelter Jaswant Rao Holkar in his flight from Lord
Lake. But there was no knowing what Runjeet Singh might do if
the French found their way to Lahore. To crown the perplexity,
the Sikh princes on the British side of the river Sutlej, who
had done homage to the British government during the campaigns
of Lord Lake, were being conquered by Runjeet Singh, and were
appealing to the British government for protection. In 1808-9
a young Bengal civilian, named Charles Metcalfe, was sent on a
mission to Lahore. The work before him was difficult and
complicated, and somewhat trying to the nerves. The object was
to secure Runjeet Singh as a useful ally against the French