England had just gained in Europe a success most important for her policy as well as for her national pride. Twice revictualled, by Rodney and by Admiral Darby, Gibraltar had resisted for two or three years the united efforts of the French and Spaniards. Each morning, on awaking, King Charles III. asked his servants, "Have we Gibraltar?" And, at the negative answer, "We shall soon have it," the monarch would assure them. It was finally resolved to have satisfaction of the obstinate defenders of the place: the Duke de Crillon brought on a body of French troops. He was accompanied by the Count d'Artois, brother of the king, and by the Duke de Bourbon. Their first care, on arriving, was to send to General Eliot the letters addressed to him which had been delayed for some time at Madrid. The Duke de Crillon had added to the correspondence a present of game, fruit, and vegetables, asking at the same time the hostile general's permission to renew this gift. The distress in the besieged town was terrible, but General Eliot responded to the duke with thanks and a refusal. "I have made it a point of honor," said he, "in the matter of plenty and of dearth to make common cause with the last of my brave soldiers: this will be my excuse for begging your Excellency not to overwhelm me with favors in the future."
Some floating batteries, cleverly constructed by a French engineer, the Chevalier d'Arcon, threatened the ramparts of the place. On the 13th of September, at nine o'clock in the morning, the Spaniards opened fire; all the artillery of the fort replied: the surrounding mountains echoed the cannonade. The entire army, which covered the coast, anxiously awaited the result of the enterprise. The fortifications were already beginning to give way, and the batteries had been firing for five hours. All at once, the Prince of Nassau, who commanded a detachment, thought he perceived that the flames were reaching his heavy ship. The fire spread rapidly, and one after another the floating batteries were dismantled. "At seven o'clock we had lost all hope," said an Italian officer who had taken part in the assault; "we no longer fired, and our signals of distress remained without effect. The red balls of the besieged rained on us. The crews were threatened on all sides. Timidly and in weak detachments, the boats of the two fleets glided into the shadow of the batteries, in the hope of saving some of the unfortunates who were perishing. The flames which blazed over the ships doomed to perish served to direct the fire of the English as surely as if it were full day. Captain Curtis, at the head of a little flotilla of gunboats, barred the passage of the rescuers up to the moment when, suddenly changing his character, he consecrated all his strength and the courage of his brave sailors to contend with the flames and waves for the life of the unfortunate Spaniards who were on the point of perishing. Four hundred men owed their existence to his generous efforts. One month after that day so disastrous for the allies, Lord Howe, favored by chance winds, revictualled, for the third time and almost without a fight, the fortress and the town, under the very eyes of the enemy. Gibraltar remained impregnable. The siege no longer continued except in form."
Negotiations were being carried on in Paris, secretly and in private between America and England by Messrs. Oswald and Franklin, and officially between Mr. Grenville and M. de Vergennes. Lord Rockingham had just died, at the age of fifty-two, and the cabinet was re-formed under the leadership of Lord Shelburne, deprived of the brilliancy which Charles Fox had brought to it. The latter seized a pretext to withdraw. He had demanded that the independence of the American colonies should be recognized at once and without relation to a treaty of peace. Lord Shelburne, while admitting the same basis, wished to pursue a more complete negotiation. Fox gave in his resignation, and William Pitt took his place in the cabinet. The first care of Lord Shelburne was to recall Sir Henry Clinton, who was too much compromised in the heat of the American war to be in a position to shape the peace. Party and territorial feuds were grafted on the fertile trunk of national enmities. Everywhere in Georgia and Carolina the ambuscades and reprisals of loyalists and patriots fostered a state of irritation and cruel disorder to which Washington was resolved to put an end. The loyalists of Middletown captured a captain in the service of Congress, and he was hanged. The general-in-chief demanded that the English officer who commanded the detachment should be given up to him. On the refusal of Sir Henry Clinton, who had himself caused the delinquent to be arrested, Washington decided to employ the system of reprisals. Up till then he had studiously avoided it. "I know better than to think of the system of reprisals," he wrote to General Greene; "I am, however, perfectly convinced of this: when one has not the criminal himself at hand, it is the most difficult of all laws to execute. It is impossible that humanity should not intervene in favor of the innocent condemned for the fault of others." The council of war and Congress had, however, adopted the principle and condemned to death Captain Asgill, son of Sir Charles Asgill, an amiable young man of nineteen. Washington seemed to have made up his mind and to have hardened his heart against the appeals of pity. "My resolve," said he, "is based on so long reflection that it will remain immovable. Whatever my feelings of sympathy for the unhappy victim may be, the satisfactory conduct of the enemy can alone cause a ray of hope to arise for him." He delayed, nevertheless, to have the sentence executed. Lady Asgill, in her maternal despair, addressed herself to Marie Antoinette. The latter charged M. de Vergennes to transmit to Congress and to Washington her pressing entreaties in favor of the unfortunate young man. "If I were called to give my opinion," said the general, "I would be of opinion that he should be released." On the 7th of November a vote of Congress pronounced the pardon of Captain Asgill. M. de Vergennes had provided against fresh acts of vengeance. "In seeking to deliver the unfortunate young man from the fate which threatens him," he wrote, "I am far from pledging you to choose another victim; for the pardon to be satisfactory, it is of importance that it should be complete."
Washington did not manifest any confidence in the pacific advances of Great Britain. In taking command of the English troops, Sir Guy Carleton had been charged with the most conciliatory proposals. He had tried to open negotiations with Congress. The latter voted a new resolution, confirming its first declarations of never treating without the concurrence of France. Washington wrote, in the month of May, 1782, "The new administration has caused overtures of peace to be made to the various belligerent nations, probably with the design of detaching some one from the coalition. The old infatuation, the duplicity, and the perfidious policy of England render me, I avow, quite suspicious, quite doubtful. Her disposition seems to me to be perfectly summed up in the laconic saying of Dr. Franklin—'They are said to be incapable of making war, and too proud to make peace.' Besides, whatever may be the intention of the enemy, our watchfulness and our efforts, far from languishing, should be more than ever on the alert. Defiance and prudence cannot harm us. Too much confidence and yielding will lose everything." He said at the same time, with a bitter feeling of his impotence in view of the sufferings of his troops, "You can rely on it, the patriotism and courage of the army are at their limit; never has discontent been greater than at this moment; it is time to make peace."
Peace was on the point of being concluded at Paris, and without the French, between England and the United States. By a diplomatic calculation, or by the insinuations of the English agents, the American negotiators—Franklin, Jay, John Adams, and Laurens—pretended to have conceived some suspicions as to the disinterestedness of France. "Are you afraid of serving as tools to the European powers?" asked Mr. Oswald of John Adams. "Yes, truly." "And what powers?" "All." The suspicion, it is true, was unjust, and Washington felt so without ever expressing it frankly. The preliminary articles of the treaty, which formally reserved the rights of France in a general peace, were secretly signed on the 30th of November, 1782.
The independence of the United States was fully recognized, and conditions as equitable as liberal were granted to the subjects of the two nations. France remained exposed to the dangers of isolation, whether in negotiation or battle. "I altogether share your Excellency's feelings," wrote Washington to the French minister at Philadelphia, the Chevalier de la Luzerne. "The articles of treaty between Great Britain and America are so inconclusive in regard to what touches a general peace that it behooves us to preserve a hostile attitude, and to remain ready in any event for peace or for war." M. de Vergennes wrote to the same diplomatist: "You will assuredly be as satisfied as I am as to the advantages which our allies the Americans will derive from peace, but you will not be less astonished than I have been at the conduct of the commissioners. They have carefully avoided me, answering me evasively on every occasion when I have inquired as to the progress of the negotiations, in such a way as to make me believe that they were not advancing, and that they had no confidence in the sincerity of the English minister. Judge of my surprise when, on the 30th of November, Dr. Franklin apprised me that everything was signed! … Things are not yet as far advanced with us as with the United States; however, if the king had employed as little delicacy as the commissioners, we would have been able to sign the peace with England a long time before they did." It was only when the cessation of hostilities and the preliminaries of a general peace were signed at Paris, on the 20th of January, 1783, that Washington allowed his joy at peace to break forth freely. He had eagerly desired it. More than any other, and to a degree rarely granted by God to the personal action of one man, he had contributed to render it glorious and happy for his country. "I am greatly rejoiced," wrote he to Colonel Hamilton, "to see an end put to our state of war, and to see a career open before us, which, if we follow it wisely, will lead us to become a great people, equally happy and respectable; but we must have, in order to advance in this path, other means than a narrow political place; than jealousies or unreasoning prejudices. Otherwise one need not be a prophet to foresee that in the hands of our enemies, and of European powers jealous of our greatness in union, we will only be the instruments of dissolving the confederation."
Through many faults, through serious and dangerous errors, and in spite of shocks, the last and most cruel of which has failed to dissolve that union so dear to the patriotic thoughts of Washington, the American people has remained a great people, and its place among nations has in a century become more considerable than its founders had foreseen. Washington had not yet ended his work; he was to guide in the paths of government that generation of his compatriots which he had so painfully accustomed to the art of war. Scarcely was peace signed when Congress was disputing with the army as to the recompense for its sufferings and efforts. The newborn United States were threatened with a military insurrection. The influence of the general-in-chief preserved them from it, while sparing his country the shame of a cowardly ingratitude. "If this country denies the prayer of the troops," he exclaimed, at the end of one of his official letters to the president of Congress, "then I shall have learned what ingratitude is; I shall have assisted at a spectacle which for the remainder of my days will fill my soul with bitterness."
The wishes of the American army were heard, and peace obtained in America as well as in Europe, although precarious and doubtful in many respects, and threatened by inward fermentation or by outside dangers, which were but ill warded off by negotiations and treaties.
To the exchange of conquests between France and England was added the cession to France of the Island of Tobago, and of the Senegal River with its dependencies. The territory of Pondicherry and of Karikal received some increase. For the first time for more than a hundred years the English renounced the humiliating stipulations so often exacted on the subject of the port of Dunkerque. Spain saw how to confirm her conquest of Florida and the Island of Minorca. The Dutch recovered all their possessions with the exception of Negapatam.
At the opening of Parliament, on the 5th of December, 1782, King George III. announced in the speech from the throne that he had at last recognized the independence of the American colonies. The nation was not unaware of how he had long resisted this cruel necessity. "In thus accepting their separation from the crown of these kingdoms," said the monarch, "I have sacrificed all my personal wishes to the desires and opinions of my people. I humbly and earnestly ask the All-powerful God that Great Britain may not experience the evils which may result from so great a dismemberment of the empire, and that America may be preserved from the calamities which have lately proved in the mother-country that monarchy is necessary to the maintenance of constitutional liberties. Religion, language, interests, reciprocal affection, will serve, I hope, as a bond of union between the two countries: I shall spare neither my cares nor my attention in that direction." "I have been the last in England to consent to the independence of America," said George III. to John Adams, the first man charged with representing his country at the court of London; "I shall, however, be the last to sanction its violation." In the hot debates against the peace which speedily arose in Parliament, the king earnestly sustained his ministers. Lord North and Mr. Fox, of late so violently opposed, had united to attack the treaties. "It is not in my nature," said Fox, "to preserve my rancors long, nor to live on bad terms with any one; my friendships are eternal, my enmities will never be so. Amicitiæ sempiternæ, inimicitiæ placabiles." Lord Shelburne was defeated, and retired. During five weeks the young chancellor of the exchequer, William Pitt, who had borne the burden of the discussion with Fox in debate, remained charged with the administration. Then the king asked him to form a cabinet. Pitt declined, with that mixture of boldness and sensible moderation which constantly distinguished his political life; the coalition ministry of North and Fox came to power on the 2nd of April, 1783. The first act of the new cabinet was to present an important bill in regard to the government of India. The affairs of that distant empire, where Great Britain was slowly coming to establish her power, engrossed all minds, excited many ambitions, and served to nourish numerous intrigues. Since the year 1765, after a violent struggle in the India Company's council, Lord Clive had been charged with remodeling the internal administration of Bengal. The prince whom he had placed on the throne was dead. To Meer Jaffier had succeeded a child, raised to the supreme dignity by the agents of the company, who had put the throne to auction. Corruption and violence obtained in all branches of the government. Clive's feelings had not been delicate, nor his conscience over-scrupulous. He was humiliated and shocked at the spectacle which met his eyes. "Alas!" wrote he to one of his friends, "how low the English name has fallen! I could not help paying the tribute of a few tears to the glory of the English nation, which is so irretrievably lost, I fear. However, I swear by the Great Being who sounds hearts and to whom we are all responsible, if there is anything after this life, I have come here, with a soul above all corruptions, determined to exterminate these terrible and ever-growing evils or to die hard."
It was with a resolute sincerity that Clive undertook and accomplished the difficult task with which he had been charged. In eighteen months he reformed all abuses and constructed a new administration on intelligent and sensible bases. Private commerce was denied to the agents of the company, whose salaries were at the same time increased. It was absolutely forbidden to receive any presents from natives. When the resistance of the Calcutta employés threatened for a time to nullify his plans, the inflexible governor announced that he would procure agents elsewhere, and he brought from Madras those whom he wanted. The most obstinate were left destitute; the others yielded. A military plot was discovered and baffled; the ringleaders were arrested, judged, and cashiered. Clive exhibited in regard to them a mingled kindness and severity. He was threatened with an attempt at assassination: he smiled disdainfully. "These officers," he said, "are Englishmen, not murderers." The sepoys remained faithful to him. The Hindoo princes who had recently sought to revolt asked for peace. The English power and the company's authority in Bengal were forever established when Lord Clive, exhausted by fatigue and sickness, departed for England in 1767. He had refused all the presents which had been offered to him, making a gift to the company, in favor of the invalid officers and soldiers of the army, of a considerable legacy which Meer Jaffier had left him.
Lord Clive had laid his hand on bleeding wounds; he had dried up in them the source of much abuse; he had effectually hindered ambitious and evil projects. His enemies were numerous and determined, and they pursued him to England with their jealous hatred. The most honorable part of his life was calumniated. Past acts were recalled which did honor neither to his heart nor his conscience. By a very natural mistake of public opinion, Clive became to the mass of the nation the type of those functionaries enriched in India who were then called nabobs, a great number of whom had seen their malversations stopped by his firm government. A horrible famine which desolated Bengal in 1770, the origin of which was falsely attributed to his measures, cast trouble into the soul as well as confusion into the affairs of the company. Many of its agents were fiercely accused. Lord Clive was involved in their unpopularity. His adversaries presented a bill on the affairs of India to Parliament. Clive did not want to be personally attacked. He defended himself in a long and carefully prepared speech, which had a great and legitimate success. His enemies then directed their accusations against the first part of his life, which were more difficult to defend. Irritated, but not uneasy, Clive boldly maintained the necessity of the manœuvres he had employed, asserting that he would not hesitate to have recourse to the same means again, and when the gifts that he had received from Meer Jaffier were harped upon, "By God, Mr. President," exclaimed Clive, "when I think of the offers which have been made to me, of the caves full of ingots and precious stones which have been opened to me, what astonishes me at this moment is my moderation."
With wise justice the House of Commons had blamed, in regard to certain points, Clive's conduct while establishing legitimate principles of government; it had at the same time the justice to recognize the great services which the general had rendered his country. Clive was acquitted by the House and justified in the eyes of public opinion. He was rich and powerful. The American war, then commencing, was about to open a new field for his military genius, and the ministry had already made proposals to him. On the 22d of November, 1774, Clive died by his own hand in the magnificent castle which he had built at Claremont. He was about to enter on his forty-ninth year. On several occasions ere this, in all the vigor of his youth, he had been attacked by that gloomy melancholy which was at last to cost him his life. Being sick and unemployed, he had recourse to the fatal solace of opium. An energetic spirit of most powerful faculties had foundered in shipwreck. England had lost the only general capable of struggling against Washington.
When Clive died thus sadly and gloomily, wearied of fortune and of glory, his successor in the Indian Empire, as potent in administration and policy as the general had been in war, Governor Warren Hastings was sustaining against his foes and his rivals that desperate struggle which the maintenance of his method was to render celebrated in England and in Europe. Born on the 6th of September, 1732, of an ancient but impoverished family, and sent to India, while very young in the civil service, Warren Hastings had already distinguished himself by intelligent services when he was appointed agent at the court of Meer Jaffier, at the moment when Clive, during his stay in India, was establishing the empire of England over Bengal. He afterwards became a member of the council at Calcutta, at the era when disorder and corruption reigned there unchecked, before the powerful hand of Clive had introduced into administration the first elements of order and probity. In 1764 he returned to England. His fortune was modest; he made liberal use of it towards his family, and heavy losses swallowed what remained. Hastings returned to India in 1769 as member of the council of Madras.
Being capable and sagacious, he was occupied in seeking advantageous investments for the funds of the company, the affairs of which prospered in his hands. The directors had at the same time got sight of the rare political faculties of their clever agent. They resolved to nominate him as governor of Bengal. The double government which Clive had founded still existed. It left the appearance of power to the nabob, but confided the reality to the hands of the English. The native ministry Clive had elevated still guided the affairs of the Hindoo prince. He was a Mussulman, and was called Mohammed Reza Khan. For ten years a clever and unscrupulous Hindoo rival, the Brahmin Nuncomar, had pursued him with his jealous animosity. Shortly after the arrival of Hastings, and contrary to his advice, on orders come from London, the new governor was obliged to depose Mohammed Reza Khan. He knew Nuncomar, however, and was resolved not to satisfy his greedy ambition. When the Mussulman minister, a prisoner, but kindly treated, had set out for Madras under a strong guard, Hastings took from the infant nabob the remnants of his authority. The post of native minister was abolished. The administration of Bengal passed entirely into the hands of the English. The little prince, still surrounded by a court and provided with an ample revenue, was confided to the care of a woman who had formed part of his father's harem. The hatred of Nuncomar was transferred from Mohammed Reza Khan to the governor of Bengal, Warren Hastings.
Having become all-powerful, and being constantly pressed by the company to send it money, Hastings had used violent and irregular means to procure the sums demanded of him. He had reduced the pensions which the English had agreed to pay to the deposed princes; he had sold towns or territories to native sovereigns; he had, last of all, engaged the company's troops in a private war of the nabob vizier of Oude against the Rohillas, and he had for a sum of money enslaved on the prince's behalf a proud and independent population, henceforth given over to the most cruel oppression. The distant rumor of this iniquity reached as far as England. In 1773, under Lord North's ministry, a new law had seriously modified the government of India. Henceforth the presidency of Bengal was to exercise control over the other possessions of the company: a council composed of four members was charged with assisting the governor-general; a supreme court of justice, established at Calcutta, was to be independent of the governor and of the council. Among the members of this new administration was Sir Philip Francis, probably the author of the celebrated letters of Junius, who was endowed with a persistent, violent, and bitter spirit, and who was soon engaged against Hastings in a struggle which was to last as long as their lives.
Francis swayed the majority in the council. He took away the government from Hastings and put his hand on all branches of the administration. Disorder became extreme. The hate of Nuncomar led him to believe that he had found a chance of destroying his enemy forever. He formulated the gravest charges against the governor-general, and Francis undertook to transmit his deposition to the council. Hastings treated Francis and Nuncomar with haughtiness. Public opinion in India was favorable to him, and he did not at that time consider himself seriously menaced. In appealing to the higher authority at London, he addressed his resignation to Colonel Maclean, his agent in England, instructing him only to hand it in in case the council of the company should show itself hostile to his interests.
His precaution being taken so far as England was concerned, Warren Hastings, bold as he was clever and calm, resolved to attempt a great stroke. He was master of the supreme court, which was absolutely independent in its scarcely limited jurisdiction. The president, Sir E. Impey, had been his schoolfellow, and willingly became his docile tool. Nuncomar was accused of forgery in a business letter—the most common and most venial of crimes in the Hindoo practice and morality. He was arrested and cast into prison. After a trial in which all the resources and intrigues of the council failed before the firm resolve of the judges, Nuncomar was declared guilty and condemned to death.
The entire population of Calcutta was in consternation. The members of the council, being furious, swore that they would save their protegé, were it at the foot of the gallows. Sir E. Impey refused the reprieve that Nuncomar's friends demanded in order that they might have time to appeal to justice or the royal clemency. The Brahmin suffered his fate with the cool courage peculiar to that Oriental race, so often weak and cowardly in battle, but impassive in the face of torture and death. The affrighted crowd which was present at his punishment fled, covering their faces; a multitude of Hindoos threw themselves into the sacred waters of the Hooghly, as if to purify themselves from the crime of which they had been the powerless spectators.
Hastings was triumphant at Calcutta. At London, in spite of the enmity of Lord North, who was closely leagued with that majority of the council in conflict with the governor-general, the shareholders summoned to vote at a general meeting inclined to the support of Warren Hastings. The finances had never been more prosperous. If he had committed faults it was in the service of the company and to its profit. The governor-general's partisans upheld him with a hundred voices.
The discontent of the ministry was so great that Colonel Maclean dreaded a premature convocation of Parliament and the accusation of his employer. He remitted to the director of the company the resignation which had been intrusted to him. Delighted to get out of the embarrassment thus, the London council addressed to General Clavering, the senior of the Calcutta council, orders to exercise power until the arrival of Mr. Wheeler, who was charged with replacing Warren Hastings.
When the company's decisions reached their distant empire, the aspect of affairs was changed. The death of one of the members of the council had overthrown the majority, and the governor-general's voice prevailed. He had resumed all his legal authority, annulled the measures of his adversaries, and deposed their creatures. He boldly denied the instructions transmitted to Colonel Maclean, and declared his resignation invalid. After a conflict of some days between General Clavering and the governor-general, both put it to the decision of the court. It was favorable to Hastings. Public opinion sustained him in the colony; he became again the undisputed master of power, and his title was confirmed by the company. The English government, struggling with the American rebellion, and threatened by a European coalition, felt the need of maintaining in India a clever, experienced, and resolute governor.
Without scruples of conscience to hamper him in a policy which was as far-seeing as it was adroit, Hastings had disarmed the supreme court. The latter had shamefully abused its power; judicial extortions and violence had spread terror in Bengal. The governor-general did not hesitate to audaciously purchase the assistance of Sir E. Impey. Thanks to new charges added to his enormous appointments, the chief judge allowed those dangerous weapons which he had used towards a defenceless population to fall into the shade. Francis, who detested Impey, rose up, not without cause, against the means which Hastings had employed to deliver the country from legal abuses. Recriminations and quarrels began again between the two adversaries. "I cannot rely on Mr. Francis's promises of good faith," wrote Hastings to London. "I am convinced that he will not hold to them. I judge of his public conduct by his private conduct, which I have always found destitute of honor and veracity." A duel took place. Hastings seriously wounded Francis. Scarcely recovered of his wound, the latter set out for England without his rancor and hatred of his fortunate rival having lost any of their bitterness. He bided his day of vengeance.
Meanwhile, Warren Hastings had attempted a futile enterprise against the Mahrattas. He was threatened in the Carnatic by the growing power of Hyder-Ali, the founder of the Mohammedan kingdom of Mysore, imprudently provoked by the English authorities of Madras, who found themselves defenceless against the most formidable enemy.
The regiments of Munro and Baillie had already been destroyed; the approach of De Suffren was announced; some fortified places alone were left to the English in the Carnatic. Madras, in terror, contemplating the flames which were devouring the villages of the plain, asked aid of the governor-general. Some weeks later Hastings dispatched Sir Eyre Coote, formerly conqueror of M. de Lally-Tollendal at Wandewash, against Hyder-Ali. Using without reserve the full extent of his authority, he raised troops, collected money, and energetically sustained the movements of his little army. The progress of Hyder-Ali was arrested. On the 1st of July, 1781, the victory of Porto Novo gave splendor and prestige to the English power, soon triumphant by reason of the death of its clever and intrepid rival.
The internal embarrassments of a disputed government had disappeared as far as Hastings was concerned. He had triumphed in military attacks, but financial difficulties, aggravated by the war which was just ended, remained heavy. It is a great proof of moral worth to resist the pressing need of money when the means of acquiring it for one's self, or for those whom one wishes to serve, present themselves at our door on every hand. Formerly, Warren Hastings had satisfied the needs of the company by despoiling the Great Mogul and reducing the Rohillas to slavery. Now he pillaged the rajah of Benares, Chey-ta-Sing, not without difficulty and at the risk of his life, which he was accustomed to expose with calm temerity. Ruined and conquered, the Hindoo prince fled from his country, of which the governor-general forthwith took possession; his nephew, become rajah, was nothing more than a dependent of the India Company, which assured him an ample pension. More odious proceedings extorted from the princesses of Oude the immense fortune which their nabob husbands had left them. Banished to their palace and deprived of the necessaries of life, the begums knew that their most trusted servants were abandoned at Lucknow to the vengeance and cool animosity of the English. In order to deliver these servants from the hands of their persecutors, they at last gave up their treasures. Sir E. Impey covered all these indignities with the cloak of legal justice. An inquiry which had just taken place in the House of Commons, under the direction of Dundas and Burke, disclosed some of these culpable actions. Sir E. Impey was immediately recalled. The shareholders of the India Company absolutely refused to depose Warren Hastings. It was only two years later that the governor-general himself resigned his functions. His wife, whom he had married under circumstances more romantic than honorable, and to whom he was passionately attached, had been obliged to return to England on account of her health. Warren Hastings joined her there in the month of June, 1785.
India was pacified. Tippoo-Saib had made a treaty with England, and his troops had evacuated the Carnatic. Alone among English possessions, the vast Oriental territories had not suffered any diminution during the war engendered by the American rebellion. The Hindoo princes had seen their power vanishing; they had become magnificent subjects while still enjoying the sovereign title. The supreme authority of the English was everywhere established; a regular administration, however imperfect and rude as yet, had on all hands succeeded anarchy. Incessantly fettered by unintelligent or contradictory orders coming to him from Europe, the governor-general had found in the resources of his fertile genius the means of government and control which his rivals and chiefs disputed with him. He had known how to attach the army to him, and the natives themselves, accustomed to the capricious exactions of their princes, blessed the prosperity and order which marked his government. He had unrestrictedly used his power with an ill-ordered zeal for the public weal. "The rules of justice, the sentiments of humanity, the sworn faith of treaties, were nothing in his eyes when they were opposed to the actual interests of the state." He had enriched himself, and his wife even more, but he had above all, enriched and served the company and England without scruple and without remorse.
It was this delicate scruple and this honest remorse that the most ardent of Warren Hastings' adversaries, virtuous, passionate, and embittered by vexatious and severe disappointments, felt. Among the accusers of Warren Hastings many were animated by hatred or personal views. Edmund Burke solely stood up for the cause of the justice and right offended by the governor-general. His name has remained connected with the trial of Hastings as that of an avenger of public virtue, disinterested and sincere even in the violence of his patriotic transport.
The greeting that awaited Warren Hastings in London did not prepare him for the fate which threatened him. Treated by the king with a marked distinction, he was solemnly thanked by the India Company. "I see myself treated on all sides," wrote he three months after his arrival in England, "in a way that proves to me that I possess the good opinion of my country."
The attack was being prepared, however, and Burke had already announced it. The coalition ministry had fallen, precisely on the India bill. It had presented a violent address against Hastings; a vote of the House of Commons had condemned it.
What would be the attitude of the new cabinet, at the head of which William Pitt reigned as master, of which Dundas formed part, he who had lately proclaimed the faults of the governor-general, no one knew. The entire opposition was in arms against Warren Hastings. Francis had entered the House of Commons and pursued his enemy with his persistent hate. The accusation brought by Burke on the subject of the war against the Rohillas was rejected by a great majority. When Fox attacked the governor-general's conduct in the affair of Benares, Mr. Pitt, who had been deemed favorable to Warren Hastings, declared that the governor had had a right to impose a fine on the fugitive prince, but that the penalty had not been proportioned to the offense. To the general stupefaction he then supported Mr. Fox's proposition. "The affair is too bad; I cannot sustain him," he said to his intimate friend Wilberforce. An eloquent speech of Sheridan ended in deciding the House. The Commons voted twenty heads of accusation, and the trial was carried before the House of Lords.
It began on the 13th of February, 1788, with extreme brilliancy. The reputation of the accused and that of the lawyers was effaced by that of his accusers, the most eloquent of their eloquent epoch. Pitt alone took no part in the discussion. Fox, Sheridan, Wyndham, and young Lord Grey had left to Burke the honor of making the first speech. He spoke at length. Chancellor Thurlow himself, although favorable to Warren Hastings, could not withhold a murmur of satisfaction. The impassioned tones of the great orator stirred all consciences, moved all hearts, when he cried at last, in a voice of thunder, "This is why the House of Commons of Great Britain has ordered me, in all assurance, to impeach Warren Hastings of crimes and grave offenses. I impeach him in the name of the House of Commons, whose confidence he has deceived; I impeach him in the name of the English nation, whose ancient honor he has soiled; I impeach him in the name of the Hindoo people, whose rights he has trodden under foot and whose country he has made a desert; finally, in the name of nature herself, in the name of men and women, in the name of all times, in the name of all ranks, I impeach the common enemy and oppressor of all."
It was with the same violence, excessive and unjust in the passion of its justice, that Burke pursued the public prosecution against Warren Hastings. The trial lasted ten years. Proclaimed from 1785 in the House of Commons, sometimes ardently, sometimes languidly, sustained before the House of Lords since 1788, it was only in 1795, and when national attention was directed elsewhere upon the actual and neighboring dramas of the French revolution, that Warren Hastings, old and almost ruined, was finally acquitted by the House of Lords, the greater portion of whose members had not assisted at the beginning of the trial. "The impeachment has taken place before one generation," said Hastings himself, "the sentence has been pronounced by its children." The accusers, like the judges, were scattered, drawn into various paths by political passion. Burke no longer fought with Fox, nor Wyndham with Lord Grey and Sheridan. Public opinion, formerly severe on the accused, had softened. The length of the trial had placed the crimes of Hastings among the facts belonging to history; it had brought to light the eminent services which he had rendered to the country. When he entered the retreat from which he was only to emerge at rare intervals, Hastings was accompanied there by public favor. It remained faithful to him even to the end of his long life. After having struggled, governed and suffered with the same calmness and the same evenness of mind which he brought towards the end of his career to the peaceful study of literature, Warren Hastings died at Daylesford, the ancient manor of his fathers, which he had formerly bought and embellished, on the 22nd of August [1818], at the age of eighty-five years.
Warren Hastings was yet alive, and America had long become an independent and free nation. India was conquered and henceforth submissive to English law. Hereafter it was on the European scene exclusively that great dramas and great actors were to appear.
I have endeavored to analyze the far distant questions, which for a long time agitated the English nation, and I now return to the events more directly bearing on its internal life and policy. I encounter at the outset, with profound satisfaction, that wise, able, and powerful minister, who has ever remained the type of a great statesman in a free country. His history is that of his country, of her glory as well as of her misfortunes; he lived for her, and died when he believed her vanquished, without carrying into the tomb any presentiment of final victory and noble reward of his indefatigable efforts.
William Pitt was scarcely twenty-four years of age, when he refused to accept the power offered him by George III. He determined, upon the formation of the coalition ministry of North and Fox, that he would not ally himself with either party, but would hold himself in reserve and act with that party which appeared to him to be in the right. Before the end of the session, Pitt found himself at the head of the opposition by his own judgment, as well as by the spontaneous movement of public opinion, openly and justly adverse to the alliance of the Whigs and Tories,—the partisans and the adversaries of American independence.
The affairs of India were upon a hazardous and uncertain footing; the ministers of the coalition had nevertheless resolved to radically change the administration of that country, by the formation of a Council of seven persons, having authority to appoint and to dismiss all agents, and to administer the government at their will, regardless of the charters of the East India Company and its established rights. It was in consequence of a necessity that each day became more and more urgent, that Mr. Fox employed his powerful arguments against the disorders and abuses which reigned in the administration of India. "What is a charter?" impudently asked Attorney-General Lee; "it is only a piece of parchment, with a seal of wax hanging from one of the corners." All English regard for acquired rights and precedents, revolted at this cynical remark. "Necessity is the argument of tyrants, and the law of slaves," said Pitt.
The members of the new Indian council were all intimate friends of the coalition. "The bill upon the Indian question which Fox has presented, will be decisive, one way or the other, for or against the ministry," wrote Pitt to his friend the Duke of Rutland. "I thoroughly believe that the measure is the boldest and most unconstitutional that has ever been attempted; since it throws, by a single blow, in spite of all charters and contracts, an immense influence and patronage in the East into the hands of Charles Fox,—in power or out of power. I believe that this bill will meet with much opposition. The ministry have risked all on a venture upon which they will probably be defeated."
All the efforts of the opposition in the House of Commons failed. The Indian bill passed by a large majority. Burke, eager already to pursue those crimes and abuses which he was one day to overwhelm with the thunders of his eloquence, gave his support to the bill. He delivered in the house a noble eulogy on that friend, from whom he was one day to separate himself with so much applause. Said he, "Fox is traduced and abused for his supposed motives. He will remember that obloquy is a necessary ingredient in the composition of all true glory: he will remember that it was not only in the Roman customs, but it is in the nature and constitution of things, that calumny and abuse are essential parts of triumph. He is now on a great eminence, where the eyes of mankind are turned to him. He may live long, he may do much; but here is the summit: he never can exceed what he does this day. He has faults, but they are faults that, though they may in a small degree tarnish the lustre, and sometimes impede the march of his abilities, have nothing in them to extinguish the fire of great virtues. In those faults there is no mixture of deceit, of hypocrisy, of pride, of ferocity, of complexional despotism, or want of feeling for the distresses of mankind. His are faults, which might exist in a descendant of Henry IV. of France, as they did exist, in that Father of his country."
The House of Lords was less inclined to reject the bill than Pitt had believed. "As much as I abhor tyranny under any form," said Lord Thurlow, "I oppose energetically this strange attempt to destroy the equilibrium of our Constitution. I desire to see the crown respected and powerful; but if the present bill should pass, it will be no longer worthy of the support of a man of honor." The ex-chancellor, boldly facing the Prince of Wales, who at this time was Mr. Fox's personal friend and admirer, added: "In fact, the king will take the crown from his own head, and place it upon that of Mr. Fox."
George III. was more courageous than prudent, and more occupied with the rights of the crown than with parliamentary privileges. He charged Lord Temple to make it known in the house, that he "regarded all those who voted for the Indian bill, not only as unfriendly, but also as enemies." The mission had its effect; the adjournment of the measure was voted. The Commons, in their turn, offended by the royal intervention, censured openly those who had provoked it. The struggle between the two houses increased. On the night of the 18th of December, 1783, Mr. Fox and Lord North received orders to surrender their seals of office. The following day, as Parliament sat agitated and expectant, there entered the House of Commons a young member, Mr. Pepper Arden, who at once offered a resolution proposing to convoke the electors of the borough of Appleby, in order to elect a new representative in place of the very Hon. William Pitt, who had just accepted the post of First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. The move was so bold that at first it excited only incredulity and pleasantry. The opposition supposed that the young minister, finding himself in a minority in the House of Commons, would call for a dissolution. "No one will admit," said Fox, "that such a prerogative ought to be used, solely to serve the purposes of an ambitious young man. As for me, I declare in the face of this house, if the dissolution takes place, and they do not give good and solid reasons for it, I will pledge myself, if I have the honor to sit in the new Parliament, to propose a serious inquiry into this affair, and to compel those who have proposed it to render an account."
Pitt, however, was wiser and bolder than his adversaries anticipated; he resolved to allow the country time to gain confidence in his abilities; to the passions excited by the contest, time to betray their motives and their consequences. He had great difficulty in forming his cabinet. Lord Temple, who accepted the office of Secretary of State, soon resigned, through spite and personal caprice. The Dukes of Rutland and Richmond, Lord Gower, Lord Thurlow and Dundas had nevertheless consented to join the ministry. The young chief resolutely faced the struggle. The houses were to reassemble on the 12th of January, 1784. "Do not quit your house nor dismiss a single servant before you see the result of the 12th," wrote Fox to Lord Northington. "Mr. Pitt is able to do whatever he wishes during the recess," said the friends of Fox.
On the 30th of December, the new Premier wrote to his mother, that he trusted she believed that it was not from choice that he had so long kept silence; in general, he said, things were more satisfactory than they appeared; and when one was uncertain regarding a result, the conviction that one was not wrong, was sometimes sufficient, especially when there was nothing better; there was besides a certain satisfaction in hoping for something more.
The first effort of the opposition tended to prevent the dissolution. Fox boldly contested the right to dissolve, in the midst of a session. Pitt sustained the attack, with a lofty and courageous boldness; he had no intention, he said, to counsel the king to dissolve, but he was not able to pledge himself never to give an advice that might become necessary. Accused of having used secret influences, he responded with disdain, that he had not come there through back-stairs influences, but when sent for by the king, had simply obeyed orders; he had used no secret influences, and he trusted that his integrity would be sufficient to preserve him from this danger: "I have neither meanness enough," said he, fixing his eyes on the opposition, "to act under the concealed influence of others, nor hypocrisy to pretend, where the measures of an administration, in which I had share, were blamed, that they were measures not of my advising; and this is the only answer I shall ever deign to make on the subject."