booty, by being suffered to retire without examination. But this is your consideration and not mine. I should be very sorry that your officers and soldiers lost any part of the reward to which they are so well entitled." Surely the inference from this is irresistible, that he understood and intended that the whole of the booty should belong to the military. Yet he talks of "uncandid advantage having been taken of a private letter written by him to Popham on another occasion [which it was not] during the heat of the siege," and of trying if the law would not compel them to refund. He did not, however, risk the attempt, and he afterwards made no reply to Mr. Burke's charge on this subject. Perhaps the best solution of the problem is, that he merely wished "to stimulate the zeal of the military by the prospect of reward, of which, at a future time, he could determine the amount, and even adjudicate on the validity of the claim "." But the military knew him and their own interest too well; for it is said, he had played this game with them before in the Rohilla war. At all events Hastings gained nothing but the gratification of his vengeance, by the deposition of Cheit Sing; for the raising of the annual tribute proved an illusory

measure.

The principal grounds on which Hastings and his advocates rely, for the justification of his treatment of Cheit Sing, are, that he was meditating rebellion, and that he was bound to contribute to the expenses of the wars in which the Company engaged. As to the first, we have only Mr. Hastings own assertion, negatived by his conduct in going to Benâres without troops, and a set of rumours and reports embodied in affidavits. As to the second, we doubt its applicability. The Company were not yet sovereigns in India; they held of the emperor, and yet they refused to assist him with troops, or to pay him his tribute. Why then should they exact from their vassal, what they refused to their liege? Further, though Cheit Sing might be bound to aid in the preservation of the Company's territories in Hindustan and Bengal, it is not equally clear, that because they chose to waste their resources in unjust wars in the Deckan, he was to be called on for additional contributions. While Hastings was at Chunar he received a visit from the vizîr of Oude, to whose capital he had intended to proceed, in order to arrange some matters of importance, to facilitate which he had removed Bristow, and sent his friend Nat. Middleton again there, as resident. A treaty was arranged, the chief object of which was the relief of the vizîr's pecuniary difficulties, which were very great. Yet, amidst all his distress, he offered Hastings a present of ten lacs of rupees. This present was accepted, and was applied to the public service; but when advising the Directors of it four months afterwards, Hastings expressed a wish to be allowed to keep it as the reward of his labours. This was certainly one of the weakest acts of which he ever was guilty. The Company at that time was in the utmost want of money; and as yet the Court of Directors hardly knew what the word generosity meant. We need therefore hardly add,

that he met with a most decided refusal.

The distress of the vizîr was occasioned partly by his own vices, weakness, extravagance, and

8 Thornton, ii. 303.

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| misgovernment, and still more by the heavy burdens imposed on him by the Company, and the rapacity of their servants. By the treaty with the late vizîr, a brigade of the Company's troops was to be kept in Oude at his expense. In 1777 a second, called the temporary brigade, was added, which he was to pay as long as he should require its services. Then several detached corps in the Company's service were placed in his pay, and a great part of his own troops were put under the command of British officers. Beside these, there was an immense civil establishment for the resident, and another for another agent of the Company; and there were pensions, allowances, and gifts to the various persons, civil and military, in the Company's service. When all these are considered, we need not be surprised to find the vizîr, in 1779, deeply in arrear, and imploring to be relieved from the expense of the temporary brigade, and the detached corps, which he declared to be not merely useless, but even injurious. Hastings, however, refused any alleviation, declared he was a vassal of the Company, and that it was for them, not him, to determine respecting those troops. He further asserted in council, that ambiguities had been left in the treaty (which was not the case), and that it was the part of the strongest to affix to them what meaning they pleased a general political maxim, no doubt, but not often so frankly avowed.

In 1780, the Nabob was 1,100,000l. in arrear, and it went on advancing. The governor-general then began to believe that his distress was real, and one of the objects of this journey to the upper provinces was his relief.

By the treaty of Chunar the vizîr was relieved from the expense of all the British troops, except the original brigade, and a regiment of Sepoys for the resident's guard, and from all payments to English gentlemen, except those of the resident's office. He was further permitted to resume all the jagheers that he pleased, giving a pension equal to the net amount, to such of the holders as had the Company's guarantee. Finally, too, he was to be allowed to resume that of Fyzoola Khân, and to give him instead of it a pension.

In this treaty the governor-general appears extremely liberal and disinterested; all is for the advantage of the vizîr, nothing for that of the Company. But the reality was widely different. Two of the greatest jagheerdars were the two Begums, or princesses, that is, the mother and the grandmother of the vizîr, to whom their husbands had given jagheers, and left treasures which their savings had augmented to a large amount, and of which it was now proposed to strip them, and to hand the money over to the Company in payment of the vizîr's arrears. To justify this, it was asserted that they had no right to this property 9, as a widow could only inherit an eighth by Mohammedan law; but against this there was length of undisturbed possession, and in the case of the younger, most unfortunately for Mr. Hastings and his advocates, the positive guarantee of the British government in 1775, which cost her thirty lacs of rupees, and which was solemnly recognized in 1778 by the governor and council. This, how

We know not Mr. Gleig's authority for asserting, that the wills under which they claimed were forgeries.

ever, Mr. Hastings spurns in 1781, on the allegation that they were aiding and abetting the rebellion of Cheit Sing. This last, observe, broke out on the 14th August, and the treaty of Chunar was signed on the 19th September. When the work of spoliation had been effected, Mr. Hastings' friend, the chief-justice, who had come to Benâres to take affidavits, in order to justify the treatment of Cheit Sing, suggested, that as possibly the people of England might not give implicit credit to the governor-general's own assertions, it would be as well to get up a body of affidavits in this case also; and he complaisantly offered to go in person to Lucknow for the purpose. He went; and a goodly number was procured, through the efforts of the resident and others; but still all was nothing but rumour and report.

The vizîr, on his return from Chunar to Lucknow, passed through Fyzabâd, the residence of the Begums, with a small party, perfectly unmolested. At his departure Hastings had urged him in the strongest terms, to lose not a moment in stripping these ladies of their property. Yet he appeared in no hurry to begin, either through shame, or, as Hastings says, lest he should have to resume the jagheers granted to the companions of his looser hours. Hastings then directed Middleton to take the matter on himself, and the vizîr at length gave a nominal consent, declaring that he did it on compulsion.

On the 8th January, 1782, the vizîr and the resident reached Fyzabâd, with a body of English troops. On the 12th the troops were ordered to storm, but no opposition was made, and they took possession of the palaces of the Begums. But as the treasure was in the zenana, and they scrupled to violate it, the plan was adopted of seizing and confining two old eunuchs, who were the Begums' principal agents. This had its effect, the elder Begum, in whose custody the money was, paid a large sum in order to relieve them. But this did not suffice, more money was demanded; the Begum declared she had nothing now but her furniture and household utensils. These the resident refused, and he wrote on the 20th to the officer in charge of the eunuchs. "I have to desire that you order the two prisoners to be put in irons, keeping them from all food, &c., agreeable to my instructions of yesterday." These severities drew from the eunuchs an engagement to pay the required sum from their own resources, but still they were not released. By the end of February, the resident had received in all 500,000l. The balance now, at the utmost, did not exceed 50,000%., yet, on the 18th May, Mr. Middleton would not relax so far as to let the irons be taken off, and the two old men, whose health was giving way, be suffered to walk about the garden. Soon after they were removed to Lucknow; and the assistant resident wrote to the English officer commanding the guard, desiring him, as the Nabob had determined to inflict corporal punishment on them, to let his officers have free access to them, and be 1 It is said that much of this evidence was furnished by Col. Hannay, and his officers. This person had left the Company's service for that of the vizîr, in 1778, from whom he rented the districts of Goruckpore and Baraitch; and though he was a distressed man then, he was, when dismissed in 1781, worth 300,000l. gained by severity and oppression.

permitted to do with them as they should see proper. Whether they were tortured or not we are not informed; they were kept in confinement till the end of the year, during which period the Begums were blockaded in their palace, and often, it is said, very short of provisions. The resident finding then that nothing more was to be obtained by severity, withdrew the guard from the palace, and released the eunuchs, taking care to inform them and their mistresses, that it was solely to the governor-general they were to ascribe this favour.

We now come to Fyzoola Khân. By the treaty made with the vizîr, in 1774, this chief was to keep up 5000 troops, and assist him with 2000 or 3000 of them whenever he should make war; and this treaty was guaranteed by the Company, on which account he paid them a lac of rupees. In November, 1780, Hastings desired him to furnish a body of 5000 horse, "as the quota stipulated by treaty for the service of the vizîr." Fyzoola showed that it was troops, not horse, and 2000 or 3000, not 5000, that were in the treaty. This Mr. Hastings could not deny, but he ascribes the mistake to the hurry of business. In February, 1781, he directed the Nabob and Mr. Middleton to demand from Fyzoola Khân an instant delivery of 3000 horse; and if he evaded or refused compliance, a formal protest for breach of treaty should be delivered. Fyzoola Khân offered to raise the 1000 cavalry he had already agreed for to 2000, and add 1000 foot; but this was refused, the protest was made, and the treaty of Chunar followed.

In that treaty it is positively asserted, that Fyzoola Khân had committed a breach of treaty, and thereby forfeited the protection of the English government, and that his continuing in his present independent state caused great alarm and detriment to the vizîr. In his remarks on the treaty sent to the council, Mr. Hastings says that his conduct was not an absolute breach of treaty, but only evasive and uncandid, and marks his unfriendly disposition, though it may not impeach his fidelity; and, finally, that neither the vizîr's nor the Company's interests would be promoted by depriving him of his independency.

The end of the business was, that Fyzoola Khân paid fifteen lacs, on condition of being exempted from all future claims of military service. Hastings' agent, Major Palmer, then proposed to him to give fifteen lacs more, and his jagheer should be converted into a perpetual hereditary possession; but he declined this advantageous offer, on the plea of want of money.

In this memorable year Hastings also had a dispute with Lord Macartney. The contemptible Nabob, Mohammed Ally, or as he now called himself, Walla Jâh, had taken up his residence at Madras, where his durbar was a focus of intrigues. Weak in mind, he was completely governed by his second son, Ameer-ul-Omrah, and Paul Benfield, of whom, says Mill, "the former is described as excelling in all the arts of eastern, the latter in all the arts of western villainy." These worthies were combined to get him to appoint the former his heir. With a view to obtaining the support of the English, the prince was zealous in getting his father to make them an assignment of his revenues; but when that was effected, and he found that he had thereby gained no greater influence with Lord Macartney, he began to form plans of vengeance,

sought to provide remedies for the various abuses then prevalent in India.

The fate of this measure is well known. It caused the downfall of the coalition-ministry, the king, at the suggestion of Earl Temple, having even gone so far as to violate the forms of the constitution by allowing that nobleman to inform the House of Peers that he should regard as his enemies those who should support the India bill. It was therefore lost; and the king, without a moment's delay, dismissed the ministry, and appointed a new one, with Mr. William Pitt, then only threeand-twenty, at its head. A dissolution of parliament followed, and the new cabinet gained a large majority in the Commons.

This last fact proves that the king knew he was safe in what he had done; for even then the crown could not form and dismiss ministries at its pleasure. But the nation had been thoroughly disgusted by the coalition, for the sake of place and power, formed between two hostile parties, one of which, at least, had been most violent in its denunciations of the profligacy of the other; the character of Fox, too, as a notorious gambler, inspired men with distrust, and the Indian interests, now able to command numerous boroughs, was exerted to the very uttermost. As to the measure itself, giving its authors all due claims for good intentions, it bore on the face of it the design of transferring to the present ministers the whole Indian patronage, and of thus rendering their power permanent. We are not, therefore, to be surprised at the nation's taking fright at such an apparent bold stroke of the great whig oligarchy, to make themselves lords over the king and people; though experience shows us that there is a compensating and adjusting power in the British constitution, or rather in human nature itself, which would have warded off all the threatened consequences.

Mr. Pitt lost no time in bringing in an India bill, and on the 13th August, 1784, it was passed. This bill left the Courts of Directors and Proprietors; but it in reality annihilated the powers of both, almost as completely as Fox's bill would have done. A Board of Control was formed, which was to consist of six members of the Privy Council, chosen by the king, i. e. the minister, of whom the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and one of the Secretaries of State, were to be two, in whose absence the senior of the other four was to preside. And as, in fact, those ministers never did attend, that member under the title of President of the Board of Control, became in reality a Secretary for Indian affairs, and is always one of the ministry. To this Board, or Secretary, was given power over all the concerns of the Company, except their commerce. All the correspondence, letters and all, between it and India, and all the proceedings of the Courts of Directors and Proprietors were to be communicated to it, and it was to have access to all the Company's papers and records. The Directors were bound to obey all commands of the Board, and the Board might send out orders to India without informing the Directors. Where then, it may be asked, was the power of the Court of Directors? It was gone. Henceforth the Directors have only so much power as the Board chooses to leave them, and it has always left them the details of management and the minor patronage; but all the greater patronage, and as

much of the minor as he chooses to have, is with the minister. And yet, by that principle which we have mentioned, which is the cause that a great legislative measure never produces perhaps a twentieth part of the good or evil that was anticipated, the Indian patronage does not add very considerably to the power of the minister, and the government of India has gone on continually improving.

To facilitate the working of the Board, and the Court of Directors, the latter was to choose a Committee of Secrecy, not to consist of more than three, to which in effect the Court was reduced. Acts proceeding from the Directors, and approved of by the Board, could not be annulled or altered by the Court of Proprietors.

All servants of the Company were to give an inventory on oath, of all the property they brought from India, and a new tribunal was constituted for the trial of English offenders in India. But the former clause was soon after repealed, and the new court was never called into operation.

The notorious debts of the Nabob of Arcot also came under consideration. The act directed that they should be investigated, and the Directors sent out orders to that effect to Madras. But the Board declared that no inquiry was necessary, and dividing the debts into three classes, with interest on them, directed that a portion of the revenues of the Carnatic should be annually set apart for their liquidation.

The President of the Board was Mr. H. Dundas, who, as chairman of the Select Committee, had some years before proposed an inquiry into the nature, origin, and amount of those debts. The motive assigned by Burke for this change, and we fear the true one, is parliamentary influence. "Paul Benfield," said that great orator, "made, reckoning himself, no fewer than eight members in the last parliament. What copious streams of pure blood must he not have transfused into the veins of the present?" But as Benfield was in India at the time of the elections, the person with whom the ministry dealt directly was his agent, Mr. Richard Atkinson, who, in Burke's glowing language, held out "the golden cup of abominations of the Eastern harlot, which so many of the people, so many of the nobles of the land, drained to the very dregs," i. e. who had purchased the seats. And thus did Mr. Pitt, for the sake of this unhallowed support, perpetrate as foul a job as minister ever has screened or sanctioned 3. The Directors remonstrated, the opposition exposed the transaction, but the minister relied on his majority.

In all the proceedings in Parliament relating to India and Mr. Hastings, Mr. Burke had been prominent; he spared neither his time nor his labour to collect and digest information on the subject, and from the purest, we believe, of motives. But it was unfortunately his intellectual constitution, that imagination was so strong, that it frequently predominated over judgment; and the violence of his passions at times swept him beyond the bounds of prudence. Objects acquired a disproportionate magnitude in his eyes; he yielded too ready a belief to the statements of careless or interested persons. In the reports which he had drawn up, he had frequently assailed the acts of

3 Next to Benfield's, the names of Taylor, Majendie, and Call, figure in the usurious transactions at Madras.

A. D. 1786.

Hastings, and on his return from India he declared, that if no one else did it, he himself would stand forth as his accuser.

Yet this might have proved nothing more than an idle threat; for Fox, and the other friends of Burke, did not share his enthusiasm or his virtuous indignation. But Hastings, strong as he supposed in ministerial support, and in the Indian interest, and stronger still in his self-esteem, which would allow him to see nothing wrong in any thing he had ever done, and who challenged honours and titles, as the rewards of his merits, would not, like Rumbold, and other less ambitious men, be content with impunity, but dared his accusers to the combat, not perhaps without the secret hope that they would decline the challenge.

In the beginning of the session of 1786, Hastings' agent, Major Scott, who, like other Índian agents, had a seat in the house, reminded Mr. Burke of his promise. There was now no receding; and after some preliminary motions, and a declaration of an intention to impeach him, Mr. Hastings was heard in his defence on his petition. On the 2nd June, on a motion on the subject of the Rohilla war, the ministry supported Hastings; but on the 13th, on one relating to Cheit Sing, Mr. Pitt declared his intention of voting with the accusers. The impeachment now was inevitable, and Hastings, though he affected to make light of it, probably regretted in secret that he had ever provoked it. His friends were furious at the change, the treachery, as they termed it, of the minister; and it is a thing which has never yet been accounted for in an adequate manner.

On the 10th May, 1787, the House of Commons proceeded to the bar of the House of Peers, and Mr. Burke, in their name, impeached Hastings of high crimes and misdemeanours. The trial commenced on the 13th February, 1788, in Westminster-hall. The managers on the part of the Commons were Burke, Fox, Sheridan, Windham, Grey, and fourteen other members. During four days, Mr. Burke was engaged in giving a general view of the charge. His appeals to the passions were all-powerful, his glowing imagination conjured up scenes of horror and oppression, that harrowed the feelings, and overcame the senses, but which proved ultimately injurious to the cause, as they were not by any means borne out to the same extent by the evidence. The charges were numerous, but only four were gone into; the treatment of Cheit Sing, of the Begums, the receipt of presents, corruption in various forms. The trial went on from session to session, and on the 23rd April, 1795, Hastings was acquitted by the House of

Lords.

We have seen how Hastings acted in the cases for which he was prosecuted, the kind of necessity under which he lay, and the approbation his conduct in general received. We doubt much, therefore, if he deserved impeachment; and we consider the conduct of his accusers often imprudent, sometimes blameable. But on the other hand, from a man of Mr. Hastings' high claims of merit and self-belief, of most perfect innocence, we should have expected a higher and more dig

4 We suppose this is what Lord Thurlow meant, when he asserted so frequently, that it was Hastings that had brought himself and his colleagues into power.

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nified line of defence than that which he adopted. Instead of seeking to suppress evidence, and having recourse to all the shifts and artifices that his astute lawyers could devise, he should have concealed nothing, and have relied on the justice and honour of his noble judges. In truth, he would have had little to fear, in our opinion, from this course, for they seemed almost predetermined to acquit him. Instead of standing on the broad basis of universal truth and equity, they guided themselves by the narrowest rules of the commonlaw courts 5, and as far as was possible rejected all evidence likely to injure the accused. The royal family, too, was known to be favourable to him; the Indian interest, as Burke truly said, "had penetrated into every branch of the constitution, and was felt from the Needles at the Isle of Wight, to John O'Groat's house." The press, too, was most active in his favour, and there were many other causes which will account for his acquittal.

We

After all that has been urged in his defence, and the panegyrics that have been bestowed on him, we still regard Hastings as morally a bad man, as one who, in the gratification of his vengeance, or when acting under any supposed state-necessity, would not lightly be impeded by any moral principle; who generally preferred the tortuous to the direct course, and loved to envelope himself in mystery; who, if not corrupt himself, had no scruple to lavish the revenues of the state on his adherents, or on those whose support he hoped to gain. But at the same time we willingly do homage to his high mental powers, his unyielding courage, his fertility of resource, his clearness of view. think, that had he not been forced into war by the folly of the other Presidencies, and thwarted by violent and unscrupulous colleagues, while ill-supported from home, that he would have averted much evil from India, and rendered the British empire there a blessing to the country; for Hastings never pursued evil but from an idea of necessity. It was he who first devised the systems of judicature, and of collection of the revenue, which are still in use; and he was the first who induced the servants of the Company to seek to acquire a knowledge of the native jurisprudence and literature. On his trial, abundant native testimonials in his favour were produced, and his name is at the present day highly popular with the native population. Still his character, though so much to be admired, does not win on our sympathies like that of Clive. He was cold and stately; he was too fond of dwelling on his own merits, and asserting the purity of his motives; and perhaps he made too much display of his respect for religion, to allow us to regard it as being perfectly sincere 6.

Hastings survived his acquittal more than twenty years. In 1813 he was examined on Indian affairs before the House of Commons, and as he was re

5 "We cannot hear, but with the utmost astonishment

and apprehension, that the supreme court of judicature is

to be concluded, by the instituted rules of the practice of inferior courts." Lords' Protest, 1788.

6 Hastings has lately found two zealous defenders, the one his biographer, the Rev. Mr. Gleig, in whose pages his

character, both public and private, is all but immaculate;

the other, Mr. Wilson, in his notes on Mill. But Mr. Wil son's arguments are, in our eyes, at times sophistical, and his defence goes a little too much on the principle of ends sanctioning means.