"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.
Clive and Warren Hastings need to be bracketed together in the history of India. They were the men who made our Empire, and they were both impeached for their methods by their countrymen.
And both were acquitted. How came this about?
There is a little sentence in the History of India by James Mill the historian (father to John Stuart Mill), a man presumably above sordid considerations, a man whom one would never suspect of commercialism, which answers the question:--
"In India the true test of the Government as affecting the interest of the English nation is found in its financial results."
This is not intended as blame. On the contrary, Mill goes on to make the deliberate but not quite accurate statement that Warren Hastings' administration must have been bad, because, though in 1772, when that administration began, the revenue was but £2,373,750, as against £5,315,197 in 1785, the additional income did not provide for 5 per cent. interest on the additional debt incurred.
That and that only was the fons et origo mali. England wanted gold.
Doubtless the expenses of the ruinous wars which devastated India during the latter half of the eighteenth century were a terrible charge upon the revenues; but the revenues increased during the same time, and were more than equal to current expenses, only they did not provide for £400,000 a year tax, and the payment of more than 5 per cent. interest.
In truth, England had not yet grasped the significance of the White Man's burden; she wanted to be paid for carrying it. That is the bitter truth.
But during the administrations of both Clive and Warren Hastings an effort, at least, was made to make that administration worthy of Englishmen. Clive spent his whole force against corruption; Warren Hastings spent his in an attempt to govern the people peacefully and righteously. So much attention is absorbed, as a rule, by the question of his guilt or innocence in regard to certain specific charges, that none is given to the masterly way in which he turned his brief ascendency in the Council, caused by Colonel Monson's death, not to any scheme for personal aggrandisement or even to public money-getting, but to the passing of a revenue settlement which should protect the peasant. In the course of the argument against Mr Francis' views (which necessarily formed part of the scheme) Mr Hastings made a remark which deserves quotation, if only because it seems to have roused no denial, not even from the irrepressible Francis.
"It is a fact which will with difficulty obtain credit in England, though the notoriety of it here justifies me in asserting it, that much the greatest part of the zemindars" (big proprietors, petty Râjahs, and Nawâbs, etc.) "are incapable of judging or acting for themselves, being either minors, or men of weak understanding, or absolute idiots."
This is a sweeping indictment which, had it not been incapable of denial or mitigation, must certainly have met with censure. But even Mr Francis acquiesces. He admits that "many of the zemindars will at first be incapable of managing their lands themselves."
Now we have here a most ominous admission which gives us the clue by which we can unravel much more in this tangled web of eighteenth-century India.
It was the upper class which was corrupt, which was degenerate utterly. Long centuries of unpunished crime, of depravity without one check, had done their work. The scions of the small nobility were born decrepid; they died early, outworn by vice, leaving heirs as degenerate as themselves. In lesser--ever, thank Heaven!--in lessening degree this has remained the great problem in India: how to give freedom to its hereditary rulers, and yet to ensure that the race shall not suffer, yet to give it freedom from hereditary evils.
In the eighteenth century the men of courts and cities were, as a rule, vicious to the core. If evidence be needed on this point, go to Delhi, go to Lucknow, and there, in the dregs, and lees, and off-scourings of what was once a dynasty, you will still find some of the meanest specimens of humanity on God's earth.
It was with the far-away ancestors of these off-scourings of dead courts, full, then, of pride and power, that men like Clive and Hastings often had to deal. Small wonder, then, if they often dealt with them unwisely, harshly, angered by their hopeless treachery.
But the great factor in all the many oppressions which, undoubtedly, formed part of English annexation in India was not private rapacity, it was public greed.
What, for instance, was even Clive's asserted £300,000 of plunder beside the £400,000 of yearly tribute to the English Exchequer? As for Warren Hastings' fortune, he left India an impoverished man, with scarce enough wherewithal to pay the expenses of defending himself from the charge brought against him by his country for unbridled peculation.
Both Clive and Hastings had hard parts to play, and, considering the difficulties against which they had to contend, they played them well. Though, perhaps, neither of them realised (and certainly no one else did) that the times in which they lived were transitional, that the very existence of the East India Company as a purely mercantile concern was fast drawing to a close, and that a new life of responsibility--the life of true empire--was opening before it, they acted as if they had so realised it. They flung rupees behind them to stay the gold-grubbing multitude, careless, over-careless of how they gained them; but--but they took their own way! Hastings especially identified himself with the people of India; he learnt their language, knew their hoarded wisdom, and often appealed to the lessons of their past history.
This in itself was an offence to the self-sufficient West, which failed, and often still fails, to find excuse for a breach of its own laws in the different ethical standards of the East.
Take Clive's rapacity. There was no law forbidding the reception of presents. He did great things, very great things for Mîr Jâffar, and under the same misconception of enormous wealth which made the country itself claim one million of money as compensation for a loss of £5,000, he accepted a fee of £180,000.
Regarding the Omichand incident--the only other accusation formulated against him which is of any importance--it is, at least, arguable that when bare existence for your countrymen depends on outwitting a traitor, an informer, a villain, any weapon is legal.
In like manner, if it is possible to disentangle the actual charges made against Warren Hastings from the network of words in which Sheridan and Burke caught the unwary minds of many ignorant people, it will be found that in every charge which went up to trial a simple excuse bars the way of blame.
The charge concerning his responsibility for the extermination of the Rohillas, of which he was acquitted even by the House of Commons, finds answer in his vehement dissent from the treaty forced on him by the Triumvirate, and by which he was bound to provide the Nawâb of Oude with troops.
That concerning his cruelty to the Râjah of Benares is met by the undoubted fact that no article in the treaty with the latter gives colour to the contention that the tribute payable was a fixed and unalterable sum, while the fact that £300,000 worth of treasure was discovered in the possession of the Râjah's women, disposes effectually of the plea that poverty prevented payment.
Against the accusation of his having aided and abetted the Nawâb of Oude in seizing and confiscating the personal property of the Begums, stands the undoubted fact that these ladies could not, by the laws of India, possess such property; while the charge of undue cruelty in the treatment of these same ladies is absolutely unprovable, by reason of the conflicting evidence on both sides.
Then the charge of having, during his administration, raised the cost of the civil establishment some £5,000,000, is more than met by his undenied efforts to place the Government of India on a basis worthy of England, and by the necessity for either accepting and carrying through new responsibilities, or allowing the Company to sink back into its former state, when a paltry £20 a year was all the salary it could afford to pay men whom it yet vested with almost unlimited power of extortion.
The eighth and last count--for it is as well to confine refutation to what actually went up for trial--his personal rapacity and corruption is answered conclusively by the undoubted fact that when he retired, the sum of some £72,000 represented his entire fortune.
Truly, there was some justification for the bitter cry with which he ended his defence--a defence which lies practically in denouncing English greed for gold:--
"I gave you all, and you have rewarded me with confiscation, disgrace, and a life of impeachment."
He was on his trial for no less than nine years.
These two great men left India a very different place from what they had found it. The East India Company was trying now to govern, as well as to make money. There was scarcely a district throughout the length and breadth of the land into which the thought of England had not entered; few in which the lives of Englishmen did not form a not always wholesome example. In Lucknow, however, Claude Martin, soldier of both France and England, quaint admixture of honour and dishonour, while he aided and abetted the Nawâb in cock-fighting, drew the line at debaucheries, though he kept a considerable number of wives. This, however, was forced on him by his own merits, since the courtly, good-looking, middle-aged Frenchman's favourite charity was the educating of orphans, and the girls for whom he performed this kindly office had a trick of refusing the eligible partis offered them, and electing to remain with their guardian!
Walter Reinhardt, nicknamed the "Sombre," was not so estimable a creature. He was, undoubtedly, the murderer, while in the Nawâb of Bengal's service, of the English at Patna in 1763, and the arch-factor in many other crimes. But he met his dues by marrying one of the most remarkable women of India. It was no light task to be the husband of the Begum Sumroo, who buried a laughing girl at whom the blue-eyed German from Luxembourg had cast an approving glance, under her chair of state; buried her alive, and sat on her for three days. Four was not necessary; Walter the Sombre had learnt his lesson in three!
After his death she ruled her state of Sirdhâna, not very far from Delhi, until she died in 1838, a very old woman, who possibly, despite her conversion to Roman Catholicism, looked back on her youth as a dancing-girl in Delhi with a vague regret.
Then there was George Thomas, an Irishman, whilom favourite of the aforesaid Begum, who cherished the hope--so he says--"of attempting the conquest of the Punjaub, and aspired to the honour of placing the British Standard on the Attock." He only succeeded in establishing for himself an independent principality near Hânsi, which he yielded to Lord Lake in 1803.
But all over India, in almost every town of import, Englishmen were to be found in positions of trust under native rulers. Briefly, they had come to stay; and no amount of legislation by Parliament, no prohibition of diplomacy, no exhortation to refrain from treaties or from meddling in native politics, could now avail to prevent England from becoming first factor in India.
It may be worth while to glance round that India and gain, as it were, a pictorial view of it at the time when England and the English Parliament first assumed political responsibility in regard to it by the establishment of a Board-of-Control appointed by the Crown.
In the far north, Kandahâr and Kâbul were, as ever, engaged in petty warfare, the sons and grandsons of Ahmed-Shâh Durrâni each striving for the mastery. The Punjâb was held by the Sikhs so far as the Sutlej. What are now called the Cis Sutlej States including the great battlefield of Pânipat, being under Mahratta influence. This influence had also made itself felt at Delhi, where the Great Moghul, Star-of-the-Universe and Defender-of-the-Faith, Shâh-Âlam by name, led the life of a pensioner, a prisoner, his authority gone save as a watchword to rouse strife. Oude was in the hands of the British debauchee Asaf-daula. Thence passing through Benares lay the English-held Bengal, Behar, Orissa. Westward was Poona, Guzerât, almost all Râjputana, Agra, and a great part of Central India; these were strongholds of the Mahrattas. Mysore, headquarters of the man-monster Tippoo-Sultân, murderer-in-chief after his father Hyder-Ali's death, marched with Central India the Dekkan fief of that half-hearted ally the Nizâm. Below that, again, came the Carnatic, held by that most troublesome and expensive of potentates the Nawâb of Arcot, tame bear (and bore) to the Madras Presidency, which must have wished its protégé at the bottom of the sea many and many a time.
And under all these broad classifications, such a welter of proud, poor principalities and grasping, vicious courts as surely this world's history shows nowhere else. The horrid outcome of unlimited, unbridled power in the past.
And below this again?
Below this, again, the dreaming heart of India, unchanged, unchangeable.
The heroic age of the history of British India is now past. Forced by Fate and by the strong right hand of two strong men, England, with one eye still fixed on gold, had had to turn the other on the duties of empire. So the Company was, as it were, split in twain. The old commercial interests were dealt with, as heretofore, by the Board of Directors, but the control "of all acts, operations, or concerns, which in any wise relate to the civil or military government or revenues of the British possessions of the East Indies," was vested in a Board of six members, all appointed by the Crown.
The word "British" is noteworthy in conjunction with possessions, and shows the ease with which the English nation, while still loudly condemning the action of the East India Company, availed itself of the result of such actions. The chief point of interest in the New Act was the power given to Parliament to pay the salaries, charges, and expenses of the Board of Control out of the revenues of India, provided this charge did not exceed £16,000. This was the nucleus of the present payment of £144,000 in the India Office alone.
As regards the Constitution in India few changes were made, and, after a brief tenure of office on the part of Mr Macpherson, Lord Cornwallis went out to India as Governor-General. He had served successfully in Ireland, but with disaster in America. Considering his entire ignorance of even the first conditions of Eastern life, his Governor-Generalship was much less disastrous than it might have been, though it was marred by the crystallisation of the Great Mistake which Mr Francis had first presented in nebulous form; that is to say, the engrafting on India of the Western idea that the land cannot possibly belong to the State, but that some proprietor most be found for it.
But ere this was embodied in the Permanent Settlement of Bengal, Lord Cornwallis found his hands full of minor diplomacies. Tippoo-Sultân was at war with the Mahrattas, and the latter had foolishly been given promise of assistance by the British.
"An awkward, foolish scrape," writes the Governor-General. "How we shall get out of it with honour, God knows; but out of it we must get somehow, and give no troops."
That, practically, was the first charge on his administration. How to get out of minor squabbles, and leave the prime movers to fight it out amongst themselves. Hitherto the British troops had been mercenaries. As such they had made their influence felt in every corner of India. Now all was changed. England was a power in the East, hostile or friendly as she chose, not to be bribed to the support of any one. His next task was to interview the Nawâb of Oude on the subject of the protection of his state, and in so doing rather to sidewalk round this firm non-mercenary position adopted by the Board of Control. For £500,000 was taken yearly as payment for two brigades which were to bring "the blessings of peace" under the ægis "of the most formidable power in Hindustan." Asaf-daula, however, was hardly worth protecting. He extorted every penny he could get from everybody in order to spend it on debauchery, and allowed his ministers to cheat and plunder both him and his country.
Another and a more worthy visitor pleaded for an interview, and was refused the favour. This was Jîwan Bakht, the heir-apparent to the Emperor Shâh-Âlam. He had been received by Warren Hastings, who, possibly because he saw in him a promise not often to be found in the Indian potentates of those days, allowed him £40,000 a year as maintenance. "Gentle, lively, possessed of a high sense of honour, of a sound judgment, an uncommon quick penetration, a well-cultivated understanding, with a spirit of resignation and an equanimity almost exceeding any within reach of knowledge or recollection."
Such was the character given by the great Proconsul after six months of daily intercourse; but caution was now the order of the day.
"The whole political use that may be derived" (from an interview) "is at present uncertain, but there may arise some future advantage if we can gain his affection and attachment ... but I have already prepared his mind not to expect many of the outward ceremonials usually paid in this country to the princes of the House of Timur, as they would not only be extremely irksome to me personally, but also, in my opinion, improper to be submitted to by the Governor-General at the seat of your Government."
So wrote Lord Cornwallis, and Jiwan Bakht, with spirit and resignation, contented himself finally with a request that he might be allowed at least asylum under British protection. He died of fever shortly after at Benares. Poor, proud prince of the blood royal! Was he really next-of-kin, as it were, to the Great Moghuls? If we had given him a chance, as we gave it to the monster Tippoo, to half-a-hundred scoundrels all over India, would he have regained the empire of Akbar? Who knows? He vanishes into the "might-have-been" with his high sense of honour, his spirit, and his resignation.
After this, Lord Cornwallis with a light heart took in hand the abuses of both the civil and the military services, and managed, by "making it a complete opposition question" which "brought forth all the secret foes and lukewarm friends of Government," to obtain higher salaries and better positions for both soldiers and civilians.
So far well. Then once more Tippoo-Sultân intervened, and in a trice India was back in the old days of intrigue, secret treaties, allies, and war. Even Lord Cornwallis, the Liberal pillar of upright, straightforward policy, fell before the peculiar temptations of Oriental diplomacy. There is much to be said for him. Tippoo was an unwarrantable survival. He ought long before to have been hanged, drawn, and quartered. As it was, he burst in upon the coming civilisation and culture, as Mr Burke's 'meteor' burst upon the 'peaceful fields.'
It would take too long to tell the tale of the four years' war during which the Mahrattas, the Dekkanites, and the English, hunted Tippoo ineffectively from pillar to post, and he retaliated in kind. Finally, in 1792, he was cornered at Seringapatam, and once more peace was concluded with a man who deserved nothing but the death of a mad dog.
Then ensued a partition of spoil after the old style; each ally receiving so many lakhs of money, so much territory. After which Lord Cornwallis, covered with glory, found leisure to address himself towards crystallising into our rule for ever--unless some Government arises strong enough to put the wheel back and start afresh--the Fundamental Error, the Great Mistake of the British Empire in India.
In 1793 Mr Dundas and Mr Pitt, neither of them possessing a scrap of first-hand knowledge of their subject, "shut themselves up for ten days at Wimbledon" (Heaven save the mark!) and evolved out of their inner consciousness the Permanent Settlement; thus once and for ever--unless for the forlorn hope of a strong Government--alienating from the Sovereign power of India a possession which had been the Crown's by right beyond the memory of man--in all probability for over five thousand years.
As usual with all overwhelming errors, it was done from the purest motives of truth and honour, mercy and judgment; that is to say, from the Western definitions of these virtues. As Lord Cornwallis writes, he was restoring the rightful landowners
"to such circumstances as to enable them to support their families with decency and give a liberal education to their children according to the customs of their respective castes and religions," thus securing "a regular gradation of ranks ... nowhere more necessary than in this country for preserving order in civil society."
It sounds quite unassailable to Western ears; but the results opened Western eyes. The measure was passed in 1794; in 1796 one-tenth of the land in Bengal, Behar, and Orissa was on sale. The ancient order of zemindars, so far from giving a liberal education to its children, was fast disappearing, glad to accept the small amount of hard cash, if any, which remained over after settling up ancestral debts. A new race of proprietors was as rapidly taking the place of the old, to the disadvantage of the peasant. For as Sir Henry Strachey writes:--
"The zemindar used formerly, like his ancestors, to reside on his estate. He was regarded as the chief and father of his tenants. At present the estates are often possessed by Calcutta purchasers who never see them."
Nor were the judicial reforms of Lord Cornwallis much more happy. "Since the year 1793," says Sir Henry Strachey, "crimes of all kinds have increased, and I think most crimes are still increasing."
This was a natural result, first of the attempt to graft English law with all its legalities on Eastern equity, but mostly of the crass ignorance of native life everywhere displayed. Mr Shore, afterwards Lord Teignmouth, expresses this well when he says:--
"What judge can distinguish the exact truth among the numerous inconsistencies of the natives he examines? How often do those inconsistencies proceed from causes very different from those suspected by us? How often from simplicity, fear, embarrassment in the witness? How often from our own ignorance and impatience? We cannot study the genius of the people in its own sphere of action. We know little of their domestic life; their knowledge, conversations, amusements; their trades and castes, or any of those national and individual characteristics which are essential to a complete knowledge. Every day affords us examples of something new and surprising, and we have no principle to guide us in the investigation of facts except an extreme diffidence of our opinion, a consciousness of inability to judge of what is probable or improbable.... The evil I complain of is extensive, and, I fear, irreparable. The difficulty we experience in discerning truth and falsehood among the natives may be ascribed, I think ... to their excessive ignorance of our characters and our almost equal ignorance of theirs."
The last sentence is perhaps scarcely strong enough, for Lord Cornwallis failed to find one civil servant of the Company in Madras who was "tolerably acquainted with the language and manners of the people."
Meanwhile, war had once more broken out between France and England, and though it had not yet disturbed India, Tippoo-Sultân, with his usual hardihood, bragged of the marvels of the French Revolution to the English officer charged, now that the ransom had been paid, with the duty of restoring the Sultân's sons, who had been kept as hostages. A trifle, which yet showed the way the wind was blowing. The Nizâm of the Dekkan, also, irritated by the tepid neutrality of Lord Cornwallis, had fled for help to French arms. Nor was Scindiah better pleased. Though of low caste, being sprung from the slipper-bearer of Bâla-ji, the first Peishwa, no Mahratta house claimed higher honours. Practically, it was master of half Hindustan, and it had been greatly offended by the refusal of Lord Cornwallis to accept its offer of help against Tippoo in consideration of a like number of troops to those promised to the Nizâm. So on all sides there was hostility--a hostility increased by Sir John Shore's policy (he succeeded Lord Cornwallis as Governor-General) "to adhere as literally as possible to the strictest possible interpretation of the restrictive clause in the Act of Parliament against entering into war."
Naturally, the fat was soon in the fire. The Mahrattas, always eager for a fray, fell upon the wretched Nizâm, who, fortunately for him, failing British aid, had that of France; but so had Scindiah. Therefore Monsieur Raymond and Monsieur de Boigne crossed swords; until the death of Ragoba the Peishwa turned all Mahratta thought to the choice of a new ruler.
English thought, also, was at this time (1798) engaged in a question of succession. Asaf-daula, the Nawâb of Oude, had died, acknowledging a certain Wazeer-Ali as his son and successor. So the dissolute, disreputable lad of seventeen was promptly placed by the British Government on the throne with all honour: it did not do to divert the weather eye, which was always open for "future advantage," to such trivialities as kingly qualities. But alas and alack for the British Government, its choice was instantly challenged by Sa'adut-Ali, the late Nawâb's brother, who brought proof that not only Wazeer-Ali, but all Asaf-daula's reputed children, were spurious.
At first England hesitated at deposing her Nawâb. Then? Then it is extremely difficult to know what the real motive underlying the action was, but in 1798 we find Sa'adut-Ali on the throne of Oude, no longer an independent ruler, but a mere vassal of the British Crown. The plea of adoption raised by Wazeer-Ali had been dismissed, and in honest truth, not absolutely without cause. For the Mahomedan law does not specifically recognise it, especially when near blood-relations exist.
These events, together with the death of old Mahomed Ali, Nawâb of Arcot, aspirant to the Nawâbship of the Carnatic--whose debts had been a veritable millstone round the neck of his consistent backer, the East India Company--saw Lord Cornwallis and Sir John Shore through their term of office, and Earl Mornington, afterwards Marquis Wellesley, reigned in their stead. He landed in April 1798 and found himself instantly confronted with the results of the non-interference policy; that is to say, with renewed war with Tippoo-Sultân, who--the remark has been made before--ought long ago to have been hanged.
It is somewhat refreshing to find that immediate negotiations were carried on both with the Nizâm and the Mahrattas in absolute defiance of Mr Pitt's famous minute against diplomacy! But nothing restrained Tippoo, not even considerations of personal safety. He was well backed by the French, with whom the English were still at war. So he tried conclusions with splendid audacity. And failed. Seringapatam was once more taken, and this time Tippoo was found dead under a heaped mass of suffocated, trodden-down corpses in the north gate. But he, apparently, had died a soldier's death, for the flickering light of the torches by which the search was made showed that a musket ball had crashed into his skull above the right ear.
It was a better death than he deserved, for though his territories were well administered, and though Seringapatam was found to be fortified, garrisoned, provisioned, better than many a modern fort, and though in every way his vitality was superhuman, it was the vitality of a devil, and not of a man. Hyder-Ali, his father, had been wild, untamable, given to long solitudes in the jungles, remote from all save savage beasts. Let the only excuse, therefore, which can be made from Tippoo-Sultân be given him--he was born with insanity in his blood.
Relieved from the Tiger-cub--the golden Tiger-head footstool of the throne found in the royal audience chamber at Seringapatam is now at Windsor--who had kept Madras in a constant state of alarm for close on half a century, the Board of Control settled down to various pieces of policy, for it must not be forgotten that all political work had been taken out of the hands of the East India Company. This is a point frequently overlooked, so it must be borne in mind that for all actions after 1784, the Board of Control, that is, a body of unbiassed English politicians appointed by the Crown, are entirely responsible. They settled a disputed succession in Tanjore, they ousted the Nawâb of Arcot, and by putting a nominee of their own on the throne with a pension of one-fifth of the revenue only, became vested with the whole of the rest of the Carnatic. They then turned their attention to Oude, where the Government of Sa'adut-Ali was in a shocking state of disorder. Reformation being urged upon him, he wilily announced his intention of abdicating, and thus gained some delay. Rather to his disadvantage than otherwise, since Lord Mornington was not long in producing a cut-and-dried scheme by which the Company should "acquire the exclusive authority, civil and military, over the dominions of Oude"; and also that by "secret treaty, not by formal abdication," the Nawâb, in consideration of receiving a liberal pension, the family treasure and jewels, should agree to his sons' names being "no further mentioned than may be necessary for the purpose of securing to them a suitable provision."
It was a big order, and to it the Nawâb naturally objected. But the screw was too tight. He had yielded himself vassal in order to gain the throne. His government was atrocious. It was practically impossible for the New Code of Western Ethics, which was everywhere raising its head in menace to the iniquities of the East, to look on such things and live. So in the end the treaty was signed; and whatever else the result might be, one thing is certain, the inhabitants of Oude were none the worse for the change of rulers.
A trivial detail in the confused complication of this transaction deserves unstinted blame, and that was Lord Mornington's acceptance of the offer made by one of the Begums of Oude to constitute the Company her heir. This was openly avowed to be a means of escaping from the extortions of her grandson the Nawâb, but though it seems equitable enough to Western ears, it must not be forgotten that the India law of inheritance of those days allowed no right of will, neither did it sanction the possession by any widow of wealth beyond a certain small proportion of her husband's real and personal property, which in this case could not have included anything but personal effects, the rest belonging to the Crown.
Volumes might be written on this question of the English action in regard to Oude, but practically there are but one or two facts, one or two admissions, to be made on both sides.
First, it is at best doubtful if we had any right to depose Wazeer-Ali in favour of his uncle. True, the right of adoption does not hold good in Mahomedan Common Law, but Indian history gives countless examples of Mahomedan sovereigns nominating their own successor, though it must be admitted that this nearly always only held good where there was no collateral heir. Second, this deposition was undoubtedly in our favour. By elevating Sa'adut-Ali, a small pensioner to the throne, we gained a hold on him which enabled us to dictate our own terms at the time, and, by the mere fact of the vassalage to which we reduced him, to enhance these terms at our convenience.
On the other hand, none can deny that the state of affairs in Oude strained patience to the uttermost; nor that in essence, the throne of Oude was of our own creation. It had only a history of a hundred years, and owned its very existence to the protection of England.
The year 1800 showed the outlook all over India more than usually threatening; so lowering indeed, that Lord Mornington, now the Marquis Wellesley, consented to prolong his service in India in order to tide affairs over the crisis which seemed about to come.
The chief factor in the unrest was Mahratta jealousy. The Nizâm of the Dekkan, their hereditary enemy, had just been granted a new treaty. Under it he had been promised a definite protection of troops in consideration of his ceding territory to the revenue amount of the subsidy which he would otherwise have had to pay--and, no doubt, would have paid irregularly.
It may here be remarked that this desire to secure regular payment for the mercenary troops necessary to maintain prestige and power, was nearly always the cause of English aggression and annexation in India.
This treaty affronted the Mahrattas, but ere they could formulate their grievances, internecine war broke out amongst them, consequent on the death of Nâna Furnavese, the Peishwa who had for so long opposed Ragoba. Over this Holkar and Scindiah, who for some time past had been at each other's throats, fought furiously, and the new Peishwa, Bâji-Rao, feeling himself in danger of falling between the two stools of his unruly vassals, applied to England for the protection of six battalions of British-trained sepoys, and promised in return to cede territory of the annual value of £225,000.
It was granted to him, but the treaty contained other stipulations regarding future relations which practically reduced the Peishwa to a state of dependence.
Holkar and Scindiah, on the part of their sections of the Mahrattas, resented this fiercely. As usual, they refused to be bound by the Peishwa's pusillanimity. So war was declared; a war which for the time taxed even Sir Arthur Wellesley's military genius to the uttermost, for the Mahrattas were born fighters. But the battle of Assaye, fought on the 23rd of September 1803, broke their power in Central India. They had over ten thousand disciplined troops commanded by Europeans, chiefly French officers, and a train of one hundred guns, in addition to nearly forty thousand irregular infantry and cavalry. Against these Arthur Wellesley had but a total of four thousand five hundred men, but they included the 78th Highlanders, the 74th Regiment, and the 19th Dragoons.
It was a fine fight; a double fight, for when, overwhelmed by a real bayonet charge--the first, possibly, they had ever seen--the Mahrattas fell back on, and passed, their guns, the artillery men, feigning death, flung themselves in heaps on the ground. So, ridden over by the pursuing cavalry, treated as dead, spurned as things of no account, they remained until, the tyranny overpast, they were up and at their guns again, bringing volte face destruction to their enemy's rear. It needed a desperate charge of the Highlanders, with Arthur Wellesley himself at its head, to retrieve the day.
The number of British killed was one thousand five hundred and sixty-six, more than one-third of their total force.
England, however, was now finally on the war-path; hesitation was over, the Mahratta power all over India had to be crushed. No less than fifty-five thousand British troops of all arms were gathered together in India, and these were divided out between the Dekkan, Guzerât, Orissa, and Hindustan proper. Of the foremost of these divisions the record has just been given; the two next, though successful, were in all ways of minor importance. The last, under General Lake, was the largest, and consisted of nearly fourteen thousand men all told. He advanced up the Gangetic plain, and the battle of Alighur was fought before that of Assaye. It was practically fought against Scindiah's forces under General Perron, the celebrated French commander, who, with De Boigne and Raymond, had been for many years the backbone of resistance against England. But it was fought in the name of the blind Shâh-Âlam, puppet-emperor of India; for the Mahrattas, always good fighters, had sent round the fiery cross on every possible pretext of personal and national loyalty, of tribal faith and racial adherence.
But on the 16th of September, after a pitched battle before Delhi in the low-lying land across the river Jumna--the country sacred now to pig-sticking!--General Lake rode with his staff to the palace which Shâhjahân in all his glory had built, there to have the first interview which a conquering Englishman had ever had with the Great Moghul himself.
It was a fateful interview. In the palace, glorious still in its lines of beauty, an old man, blind, decrepid, seated under a tattered canopy, poverty-stricken, miserable. By his side, soon to be Akbar II., was his son, and his grandson, the man who afterwards, as Bahâdur-Shâh, served out the measure of his crimes in the Andaman Islands.
It reads like some bad nightmare, does that circumstantial description given by Lake of his ride through the thronged city at sunset-time, when the people, wide-eyed, curious, expectant, crowded so close that the little cavalcade could scarce make a way for itself.
Of what were they thinking, those poor Delhi folk who had suffered so often at the hands of so many men? Were they still faithful to the memory of the Moghuls, or did their eyes seek wistfully in the faces of the newcomers for a new master?
Certainly on that 16th of September at sunset-time, after the interview had fizzled out with the exchange of empty titles, and as "Sword of the State," "Hero of the Land," "Lord of the Age," and "Victorious in War," Lake and his staff left the old palace to nightfall, and the old king to dreams, a pale ghost may well have walked through the halls of audience beneath the reiterated pride of that legend: "If there be a Paradise upon Earth, it is this, it is this, it is this," and asked itself what might have been it instead of a fever-stricken grave at Benares, it had found help to recover kingship?
Poor Jiwan Bukht! Had you, indeed, as your name implies, the Gift of Life?
Perhaps you had--and we squashed it!
But there was more to be done by Lake's force ere on the 27th February 1804 Scindiah, who was in reality the man behind the gun, gave in, and a treaty was signed which enabled the Governor-General to give vent to his feelings in the following bombast:--
"The foundations of our empire in Asia are now laid in the tranquillity of surrounding nations, and in the happiness and welfare of the people of India. In addition to the augmentation of our territories and resources, the peace manifested exemplary faith and equity towards our allies, moderation and unity towards our enemies, and a sincere desire to promote the general prosperity of this quarter of the globe. The position in which we are now placed is such as suits the character of the British nation, the principles of our laws, the spirit of our constitutions, and that liberal policy which becomes the dignity of a great and powerful empire. My public duty is discharged to the satisfaction of my conscience by the prosperous establishment of a system of policy which promises to improve the general condition of the people in India, and to unite the principal native states in the bond of peace under the protection of the British power."
After which there was naturally nothing to be done save to whack Holkar also; for he had kept out of the scrimmage discreetly. This campaign was not so successful. The fort of Bhurtpore withstood four assaults, and might have withstood four more, had not peace with honour and a donation of £200,000 intervened.
This--for the Râjah of Bhurtpore was an independent ally of the Mahrattas--rather upset Scindiah's calculations, for he was on the point of rejoining Holkar in defiance of all treaties. So the ultimate issue stood deferred when the Marquis of Wellesley ceased to be Governor-General.
He had deviated horribly from the "restrictive policy," and had consistently acted in the way which Parliament had pronounced to be "repugnant to the wish, the honour, and the policy of our nation."
But that policy had been a broken reed. It was virtually the policy of folding the arms, and awaiting the blow in the face that was bound to come sooner or later.
Nevertheless, the expense of Marquis Wellesley's wars told against his reputation; he went home obscured by a cloud of deferred dividends, and Lord Cornwallis returned for a second attempt at Indian administration. Age had undoubtedly cooled the ardour of his blood, for he immediately made most pusillanimous concessions to Scindiah for the sake of peace, passing over flagrant breaches of treaty with an easy diplomacy, and might have done infinite harm had he lived longer. But he died at Buxar within two months of his arrival in India.
Sir George Barlow took his place, but thereon arose a fine dispute between the Directors of the India House and the Ministers of the Crown concerning the patronage of this appointment.
Perhaps this was the reason why England failed to learn a lesson which would have been of use to her fifty years afterwards; for the little mutiny at Vellore occurred in 1806, and the Great Mutiny in 1857.
Yet the causes were identical. In 1857 it was a greased cartridge, in 1807 it was a cap; but beneath both lay unreasoning fear of forcible conversion to Christianity. A fear which grew to bloodshed, and which found the Europeans, as ever, totally unprepared. Nearly one hundred of them lost their lives, and but for Colonel Gillespie's swift ride from Arcot, and the wisdom of the officers in command at Hyderabad, the mutiny might have spread, as did the one at Meerut in May 1857. And it must be admitted that those sepoys of Vellore had greater cause of offence than they of later years; for they were asked to shave to European pattern, to wear a hat-shaped turban, and appear on parade minus their caste marks.
All this, including Sir William Bentinck's recall (he was Governor of Madras at the time), went on while the India House and the Crown were at daggers drawn over the Appointments question.
The latter meant to nominate the Earl of Lauderdale, who, as a pronounced free-trader, threatened to break up the Indian monopoly. The fight ended by the Earl of Minto, President of the Board of Control, taking up the appointment in 1807, which he held till 1811. It was an uneventful administration, the extinction of the Company's monopoly, which marked its close, being the only feature in it which claims a place in this modest outline of history; this, and perhaps the fact that owing to greater facilities of borrowing the Company was enabled to pay off its old debts which it had contracted when the rate of interest was 12 per cent., and renew them at 6 per cent.; thus effecting a reduction of half a million in expenditure.
As an instance of how little the Board of Control and the policy of inaction had benefited the finances of the Company, it may be mentioned that whereas its debt was in 1793 but £7,000,000, in 1811 it was £27,000,000.
But the world was beginning now to count it as a gift--as the cost of Empire.