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Things, however, were not yet at the worst. An English officer of more spirit
than judgment, eager to distinguish himself, made a premature attack on the
insurgents beyond the river. His troops were entangled in narrow streets, and
assailed by a furious population. He fell, with many of his men; and the
survivors were forced to retire.
This event produced the effect which has never failed to follow every check,
however slight, sustained in India by the English arms. For hundreds of miles
round, the whole country was in commotion. The entire population of the district
of Benares took arms. The fields were abandoned by the husbandmen, who thronged
to defend their prince. The infection spread to Oude. The oppressed people of
that province rose up against the Nabob Vizier, refused to pay their imposts,
and put the revenue officers to flight. Even Bahar was ripe for revolt. The
hopes of Cheyte Sing began to rise. Instead of imploring mercy in the humble
style of a vassal, he began to talk the language of a conqueror, and threatened,
it was said, to sweep the white usurpers out of the land. But the English troops
were now assembling fast. The officers, and even the private men, regarded the
Governor-General with enthusiastic attachment, and flew to his aid with an
alacrity which, as he boasted, had never been shown on any other occasion. Major
Popham, a brave and skilful soldier, who had highly distinguished himself in the
Mahratta war, and in whom the Governor-General reposed the greatest confidence,
took the command. The tumultuary army of the Rajah was put to rout. His
fastnesses were stormed. In a few hours, above thirty thousand men left his
standard, and returned to their ordinary avocations. The unhappy prince fled
from his country for ever. His fair domain was added to the British dominions.
One of his relations indeed was appointed rajah; but the Rajah of Benares was
henceforth to be, like the Nabob of Bengal, a mere pensioner.
By this revolution, an addition of two hundred thousand pounds a year was made
to the revenues of the Company. But the immediate relief was not as great as had
been expected. The treasure laid up by Cheyte Sing had been popularly estimated
at a million sterling. It turned out to be about a fourth part of that sum; and,
such as it was, it was seized by the army, and divided as prize-money.
Disappointed in his expectations from Benares, Hastings was more violent than he
would otherwise have been, in his dealings with Oude. Sujah Dowlah had long been
dead. His son and successor, Asaph-ul-Dowlah, was one of the weakest and most
vicious even of Eastern princes. His life was divided between torpid repose and
the most odious forms of sensuality. In his court there was boundless waste,
throughout his dominions wretchedness and disorder. He had been, under the
skilful management of the English Government, gradually sinking from the rank of
an independent prince to that of a vassal of the Company. It was only by the
help of a British brigade that he could be secure from the aggressions of
neighbors who despised his weakness, and from the vengeance of subjects who
detested his tyranny. A brigade was furnished, and he engaged to defray the
charge of paying and maintaining it. From that time his independence was at an
end. Hastings was not a man to lose the advantage which he had thus gained. The
Nabob soon began to complain of the burden which he had undertaken to bear. His
revenues, he said, were falling off; his servants were unpaid; he could no
longer support the expense of the arrangement which he had sanctioned. Hastings
would not listen to these representations. The Vizier, he said, had invited the
Government of Bengal to send him troops, and had promised to pay for them. The
troops had been sent. How long the troops were to remain in Oude was a matter
not settled by the treaty. It remained, therefore, to be settled between the
contracting parties. But the contracting parties differed. Who then must decide?
The stronger.
Hastings also argued that, if the English force was withdrawn, Oude would
certainly become a prey to anarchy, and would probably be overrun by a Mahratta
army. That the finances of Oude were embarrassed he admitted, But he contended,
not without reason, that the embarrassment was to be attributed to the
incapacity and vices of Asaph-ul-Dowlah himself, and that if less were spent on
the troops, the only effect would be that more would be squandered on worthless
favorites.
Hastings, had intended, after settling the affairs of Benares, to visit Lucknow,
and there to confer with Asaph-ul-Dowlah. But the obsequious courtesy of the
Nabob Vizier prevented this visit. With a small train he hastened to meet the
Governor-General. An interview took place in the fortress which, from the crest
of the precipitous rock of Chunar, looks down on the waters of the Ganges.
At first sight it might appear impossible that the negotiation should come to an
amicable close. Hastings wanted an extraordinary supply of money.
Asaph-ul-Dowlah wanted to obtain a remission of what he already owed. Such a
difference seemed to admit of no compromise. There was, however, one course
satisfactory to both sides, one course by which it wan possible to relieve the
finances both of Oude and of Bengal; and that course was adopted. It was simply
this, that the Governor-General and the Nabob Vizier should join to rob a third
party; and the third party whom they determined to rob was the parent of one of
the robbers.
The mother of the late Nabob and his wife, who was the mother of the present
Nabob, were known as the Begums or Princesses of Oude. They had possessed great
influence over Sujah Dowlah, and had, at his death, been left in possession of a
splendid donation. The domains of which they received the rents and administered
the government were of wide extent. The treasure hoarded by the late Nabob, a
treasure which was popularly estimated at near three millions sterling, was in
their hands. They continued to occupy his favorite palace at Fyzabad, the
Beautiful Dwelling; while Asaph-ul-Dowlah held his court in the stately Lucknow,
which he had built for himself on the shores of the Goomti, and had adorned with
noble mosques and colleges.
Asaph-ul-Dowlah had already extorted considerable sums from his mother. She had
at length appealed to the English; and the English had interfered. A solemn
compact had been made, by which she consented to give her son some pecuniary
assistance, and he in his turn promised never to commit any further invasion of
her rights. This compact was formally guaranteed by the Government of Bengal.
But times had changed; money was wanted; and the power which had given the
guarantee was not ashamed to instigate the spoiler to excesses such that even he
shrank from them.
It was necessary to find some pretext for a confiscation inconsistent, not
merely with plighted faith, not merely with the ordinary rules of humanity and
justice, but also with that great law of filial piety which, even in the wildest
tribes of savages, even in those more degraded communities which wither under
the influence of a corrupt half-civilization, retains a certain authority over
the human mind. A pretext was the last thing that Hastings was likely to want.
The insurrection at Benares had produced disturbances in Oude. These
disturbances it was convenient to impute to the Princesses. Evidence for the
imputation there was scarcely any; unless reports wandering from one mouth to
another, and gaining something by every transmission, may be called evidence.
The accused were furnished with no charge; they were permitted to make no
defense for the Governor-General wisely considered that, if he tried them, he
might not be able to find a ground for plundering them. It was agreed between
him and the Nabob Vizier that the noble ladies should, by a sweeping act of
confiscation, be stripped of their domains and treasures for the benefit of the
Company, and that the sums thus obtained should be accepted by the Government of
Bengal in satisfaction of its claims on the Government of Oude.
While Asaph-ul-Dowlah was at Chunar, he was completely subjugated by the clear
and commanding intellect of the English statesman. But, when they had separated,
the Vizier began to reflect with uneasiness on the engagements into which he had
entered. His mother and grandmother protested and implored. His heart, deeply
corrupted by absolute power and licentious pleasures, yet not naturally
unfeeling, failed him in this crisis. Even the English resident at Lucknow,
though hitherto devoted to Hastings, shrank from extreme measures. But the
Governor-General was inexorable. He wrote to the resident in terms of the
greatest severity, and declared that, if the spoliation which had been agreed
upon were not instantly carried into effect, he would himself go to Lucknow, and
do that from which feebler minds recoil with dismay. The resident, thus menaced,
waited on his Highness, and insisted that the treaty of Chunar should be carried
into full and immediate effect. Asaph-ul-Dowlah yielded making at the same time
a solemn protestation that he yielded to compulsion. The lands were resumed; but
the treasure was not so easily obtained. It was necessary to use violence. A
body of the Company's troops marched to Fyzabad, and forced the gates of the
palace. The Princesses were confined to their own apartments. But still they
refused to submit. Some more stringent mode of coercion was to be found. A mode
was found of which, even at this distance of time, we cannot speak without shame
and sorrow.
There were at Fyzabad two ancient men, belonging to that unhappy class which a
practice, of immemorial antiquity in the East, has excluded from the pleasures
of love and from the hope of posterity. It has always been held in Asiatic
courts that beings thus estranged from sympathy with their kind are those whom
princes may most safely trust. Sujah Dowlah had been of this opinion. He had
given his entire confidence to the two eunuchs; and after his death they
remained at the head of the household of his widow.
These men were, by the orders of the British Government, seized, imprisoned,
ironed, starved almost to death, in order to extort money from the Princesses.
After they had been two months in confinement, their health gave way. They
implored permission to take a little exercise in the garden of their prison. The
officer who was in charge of them stated that, if they were allowed this
indulgence, there was not the smallest chance of their escaping, and that their
irons really added nothing to the security of the custody in which they were
kept. He did not understand the plan of his superiors. Their object in these
inflictions was not security but torture; and all mitigation was refused. Yet
this was not the worst. It was resolved by an English government that these two
infirm old men should be delivered to the tormentors. For that purpose they were
removed to Lucknow. What horrors their dungeon there witnessed can only be
guessed. But there remains on the records of Parliament, this letter, written by
a British resident to a British soldier:
"Sir, the Nabob having determined to inflict corporal punishment upon the
prisoners under your guard, this is to desire that his officers, when they shall
come, may have free access to the prisoners, and be permitted to do with them as
they shall see proper."
While these barbarities were perpetrated at Lucknow, the Princesses were still
under duress at Fyzabad. Food was allowed to enter their apartments only in such
scanty quantities that their female attendants were in danger of perishing with
hunger. Month after month this cruelty continued, till at length, after twelve
hundred thousand pounds had been wrung out of the Princesses, Hastings began to
think that he had really got to the bottom of their coffers, arid that no rigor
could extort more. Then at length the wretched men who were detained at Lucknow
regained their liberty. When their irons were knocked off, and the doors of
their prison opened, their quivering lips, the tears which ran down their
cheeks, and the thanksgivings which they poured forth to the common Father of
Mussulmans and Christians, melted even the stout hearts of the English warriors
who stood by.
But we must not forget to do justice to Sir Elijah Impey's conduct on this
occasion. It was not indeed easy for him to intrude himself into a business so
entirely alien from all his official duties. But there was something
inexpressibly alluring, we must suppose, in the peculiar rankness of the infamy
which was then to be got at Lucknow. He hurried thither as fast as relays of
palanquin-bearers could carry him. A crowd of people came before him with
affidavits against the Begums, ready drawn in their hands. Those affidavits he
did not read. Some of them, indeed, he could not read; for they were in the
dialects of Northern India, and no interpreter was employed. He administered the
oath to the deponents with all possible expedition, and asked not a single
question, not even whether they had perused the statements to which they swore.
This work performed, he got again into his palanquin, and posted back to
Calcutta, to be in time for the opening of term. The cause was one which, by his
own confession, lay altogether out of his jurisdiction. Under the charter of
justice, he had no more right to inquire into crimes committed by Asiatics in
Oude than the Lord President of the Court of Session of Scotland to hold an
assize at Exeter. He had no right to try the Begums, nor did he pretend to try
them. With what object, then, did he undertake so long a journey? Evidently in
order that he might give, in an irregular manner, that sanction which in a
regular manner he could not give, to the crimes of those who had recently hired
him; and in order that a confused mass of testimony which he did not sift, which
he did not even read, might acquire an authority not properly belonging to it,
from the signature of the highest judicial functionary in India.
The time was approaching, however, when he was to be stripped of that robe which
has never, since the Revolution, been disgraced so foully as by him. The state
of India had for some time occupied much of the attention of the British
Parliament. Towards the close of the American war, two committees of the Commons
sat on Eastern affairs. In one Edmund Burke took the lead. The other was under
the presidency of the able and versatile Henry Dundas, then Lord Advocate of
Scotland. Great as are the changes which, during the last sixty years, have
taken place in our Asiatic dominions, the reports which those committees laid on
the table of the House will still be found most interesting and instructive.
There was as yet no connection between the Company and either of the great
parties in the State. The ministers had no motive to defend Indian abuses. On
the contrary, it was for their interest to show, if possible, that the
government and patronage of our Oriental empire might, with advantage, be
transferred to themselves, The votes, therefore, which, in consequence of the
reports made by the two committees, were passed by the Commons, breathed the
spirit of stern and indignant justice. The severest epithets were applied to
several of the measures of Hastings, especially to the Rohilla war; and it was
resolved, on the motion of Mr. Dundas, that the Company ought to recall a
Governor-General who had brought such calamities on the Indian people, and such
dishonor on the British name. An act was passed for limiting the jurisdiction of
the Supreme Court. The bargain which Hastings had made with the Chief Justice
was condemned in the strongest terms; and an address was presented to the King,
praying that Impey might be summoned home to answer for his misdeeds.
Impey was recalled by a letter from the Secretary of State. But the proprietors
of India Stock resolutely refused to dismiss Hastings from their service, and
passed a resolution affirming, what was undeniably true, that they were
entrusted by law with the right of naming and removing their Governor-General,
and that they were not bound to obey the directions of a single branch of the
legislature with respect to such nomination or removal.
Thus supported by his employers, Hastings remained at the head of the Government
of Bengal till the spring of 1785. His administration, so eventful and stormy,
closed in almost perfect quiet. In the Council there was no regular opposition
to his measures. Peace was restored to India. The Mahratta war had ceased. Hyder
was no more. A treaty had been concluded with his son, Tippoo; and the Carnatic
had been evacuated by the armies of Mysore. Since the termination of the
American war, England had no European enemy or rival in the Eastern seas.
On a general review of the long administration of Hastings, it is impossible to
deny that, against the great crimes by which it is blemished, we have to set off
great public services. England had passed through a perilous crisis. She still,
indeed, maintained her place in the foremost rank of European powers; and the
manner in which she had defended herself against fearful odds had inspired
surrounding nations with a high opinion both of her spirit and of her strength.
Nevertheless, in every part of the world, except one, she had been a loser. Not
only had she been compelled to acknowledge the independence of thirteen colonies
peopled by her children, and to conciliate the Irish by giving up the right of
legislating for them; but, in the Mediterranean, in the Gulf of Mexico, on the
coast of Africa, on the continent of America, she had been compelled to cede the
fruits of her victories in former wars. Spain regained Minorca and Florida;
France regained Senegal, Goree, and several West Indian Islands. The only
quarter of the world in which Britain had lost nothing was the quarter in which
her interests had been committed to the care of Hastings. In spite of the utmost
exertions both of European and Asiatic enemies, the power of our country in the
East had been greatly augmented. Benares was subjected, the Nabob Vizier reduced
to vassalage. That our influence had been thus extended, nay, that Fort William
and Fort St. George had not been occupied by hostile armies, was owing, if we
may trust the general voice of the English in India, to the skill and resolution
of Hastings.
His internal administration, with all its blemishes, gives him a title to be
considered as one of the most remarkable men in our history. He dissolved the
double government. He transferred the direction of affairs to English hands. Out
of a frightful anarchy, he educed at least a rude and imperfect order. The whole
organization by which justice was dispensed, revenue collected, peace maintained
throughout a territory not inferior in population to the dominions of Lewis the
Sixteenth or the Emperor Joseph, was formed and superintended by him. He boasted
that every public office, without exception, which existed when he left Bengal,
was his creation. It is quite true that this system, after all the improvements
suggested by the experience of sixty years, still needs improvement, and that it
was at first far more defective than it now is. But whoever seriously considers
what it is to construct from the beginning the whole of a machine so vast and
complex as a government, will allow that what Hastings effected deserves high
admiration. To compare the most celebrated European ministers to him seems to us
as unjust as it would be to compare the best baker in London with Robinson
Crusoe, who, before he could bake a single loaf, had to make his plough and his
harrow, his fences and his scarecrows, his sickle and his flail, his mill and
his oven.
The just fame of Hastings rises still higher, when we reflect that he was not
bred a statesman; that he was sent from school to a counting-house; and that he
was employed during the prime of his manhood as a commercial agent, far from all
intellectual society.
Nor must we forget that all, or almost all, to whom, when placed at the head of
affairs, he could apply for assistance, were persons who owed as little as
himself, or less than himself, to education. A minister in Europe finds himself,
on the first day on which he commences his functions, surrounded by experienced
public servants, the depositaries of official traditions. Hastings had no such
help. His own reflection, his own energy, were to supply the place of all
Downing Street and Somerset House. Having had no facilities for learning, he was
forced to teach. He had first to form himself, and then to form his instruments;
and this not in a single department, but in all the departments of the
administration.
It must be added that, while engaged in this most arduous task, he was
constantly trammeled by orders from home, and frequently borne down by a
majority in Council. The preservation of an Empire from a formidable combination
of foreign enemies, the construction of a government in all its parts, were
accomplished by him, while every ship brought out bales of censure from his
employers, and while the records of every consultation were filled with
acrimonious minutes by his colleagues. We believe that there never was a public
man whose temper was so severely tried; not Marlborough, when thwarted by the
Dutch Deputies; not Wellington, when he had to deal at once with the Portuguese
Regency, the Spanish juntas, and Mr. Percival. But the temper of Hastings was
equal to almost any trial. It was not sweet; but it was calm. Quick and vigorous
as his intellect was, the patience with which he endured the most cruel
vexations, till a remedy could be found, resembled the patience of stupidity. He
seems to have been capable of resentment, bitter and long enduring; yet his
resentment so seldom hurried him into any blunder, that it may be doubted
whether what appeared to be revenge was anything but policy.
The effect of this singular equanimity was that he always had the full command
of all the resources of one of the most fertile minds that ever existed.
Accordingly no complication of perils and embarrassments could perplex him. For
every difficulty he had a contrivance ready; and, whatever may be thought of the
justice and humanity of some of his contrivances, it is certain that they seldom
failed to serve the purpose for which they were designed.
Together with this extraordinary talent for devising expedients, Hastings
possessed, in a very high degree, another talent scarcely less necessary to a
man in his situation; we mean the talent for conducting political controversy.
It is as necessary to an English statesman in the East that he should be able to
write, as it is to a minister in this country that he should be able to speak.
It is chiefly by the oratory of a public man here that the nation judges of his
powers. It is from the letters and reports of a public man in India that the
dispensers of patronage form their estimate of him. In each case, the talent
which receives peculiar encouragement is developed, perhaps at the expense of
the other powers. In this country, we sometimes hear men speak above their
abilities. It is not very unusual to find gentlemen in the Indian service who
write above their abilities. The English politician is a little too much of a
debater; the Indian politician a little too much of an essayist.
Of the numerous servants of the Company who have distinguished themselves as
framers of minutes and dispatches, Hastings stands at the head. He was indeed
the person who gave to the official writing of the Indian governments the
character which it still retains. He was matched against no common antagonist.
But even Francis was forced to acknowledge, with sullen and resentful candor,
that there was no contending against the pen of Hastings. And, in truth, the
Governor-General's power of making out a case, of perplexing what it was
inconvenient that people should understand, and of setting in the clearest point
of view whatever would bear the light, was incomparable. His style must be
praised with some reservation. It was in general forcible, pure, and polished;
but it was sometimes, though not often, turgid, and, on one or two occasions,
even bombastic. Perhaps the fondness of Hastings for Persian literature may have
tended to corrupt his taste.
And, since we have referred to his literary tastes, it would be most unjust not
to praise the judicious encouragement which, as a ruler, he gave to liberal
studies and curious researches. His patronage was extended, with prudent
generosity, to voyages, travels, experiments, publications. He did little, it is
true, towards introducing into India the learning of the West. To make the young
natives of Bengal familiar with Milton and Adam Smith, to substitute the
geography, astronomy, and surgery of Europe for the dotages of the Brahminical
superstition, or for the imperfect science of ancient Greece transfused through
Arabian expositions, this was a scheme reserved to crown the beneficent
administration of a far more virtuous ruler. Still it is impossible to refuse
high commendation to a man who, taken from a ledger to govern an empire,
overwhelmed by public business, surrounded by people as busy as himself and
separated by thousands of leagues from almost all literary society, gave, both
by his example and by his munificence, a great impulse to learning. In Persian
and Arabic literature he was deeply skilled. With the Sanscrit he was not
himself acquainted; but those who first brought that language to the knowledge
of European students owed much to his encouragement. It was under his protection
that the Asiatic Society commenced its honorable career. That distinguished body
selected him to be its first president; but, with excellent taste and feeling,
he declined the honor in favor of Sir William Jones. But the chief advantage
which the students of Oriental letters derived from his patronage remains to be
mentioned. The Pundits of Bengal had always looked with great jealousy on the
attempts of foreigners to pry into those mysteries which were locked up in the
sacred dialect. The Brahminical religion had been persecuted by the Mohammedans.
What the Hindus knew of the spirit of the Portuguese Government might warrant
them in apprehending persecution from Christians. That apprehension, the wisdom
and moderation of Hastings removed. He was the first foreign ruler who succeeded
in gaining the confidence of the hereditary priests of India, and who induced
them to lay open to English scholars the secrets of the old Brahminical theology
and jurisprudence.
It is indeed impossible to deny that, in the great art of inspiring large masses
of human beings with confidence and attachment, no ruler ever surpassed
Hastings. If he had made himself popular with the English by giving up the
Bengalees to extortion and oppression, or if, on the other hand, he had
conciliated the Bengalees and alienated the English, there would have been no
cause for wonder. What is peculiar to him is that, being the chief of a small
band of strangers, who exercised boundless power over a great indigenous
population, he made himself beloved both by the subject many and by the dominant
few. The affection felt for him by the civil service was singularly ardent and
constant. Through all his disasters and perils, his brethren stood by him with
steadfast loyalty. The army, at the same time, loved him as armies have seldom
loved any but the greatest chiefs who have led them to victory. Even in his
disputes with distinguished military men, he could always count on the support
of the military profession. While such was his empire over the hearts of his
countrymen, he enjoyed among the natives a popularity, such as other governors
have perhaps better merited, but such as no other governor has been able to
attain. He spoke their vernacular dialects with facility and precision. He was
intimately acquainted with their feelings and usages. On one or two occasions,
for great ends, he deliberately acted in defiance of their opinion; but on such
occasions he gained more in their respect than he lost in their love, In
general, he carefully avoided all that could shock their national or religious
prejudices. His administration was indeed in many respects faulty; but the
Bengalee standard of good government was not high. Under the Nabobs, the
hurricane of Mahratta cavalry had passed annually over the rich alluvial plain.
But even the Mahratta shrank from a conflict with the mighty children of the
sea; and the immense rich harvests of the Lower Ganges were safely gathered in
under the protection of the English sword. The first English conquerors had been
more rapacious and merciless even than the Mahrattas--but that generation had
passed away. Defective as was the police, heavy as were the public burdens, it
is probable that the oldest man in Bengal could not recollect a season of equal
security and prosperity. For the first time within living memory, the province
was placed under a government strong enough to prevent others from robbing, and
not inclined to play the robber itself. These things inspired goodwill. At the
same time, the constant success of Hastings and the manner in which he
extricated himself from every difficulty made him an object of superstitious
admiration; and the more than regal splendor which he sometimes displayed
dazzled a people who have much in common with children. Even now, after the
lapse of more than fifty years, the natives of India still talk of him as the
greatest of the English; and nurses sing children to sleep with a jingling
ballad about the fleet horses and richly caparisoned elephants of Sahib Warren
Hostein.
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