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.