The History of British India, Vol. III, by James Mill

That's French for "the ancient system," as in the ancient system of feudal privileges and the exercise of autocratic power over the peasants. The ancien regime never goes away, like vampires and dinosaur bones they are always hidden in the earth, exercising a mysterious influence. It is not paranoia to believe that the elites scheme against the common man. Inform yourself about their schemes here.

Re: The History of British India, Vol. III, by James Mill

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The letter, containing the account of the capture of Salsette, and the negotiation with Ragoba, written by the Bombay Presidency to the supreme Council, on the 31st of December, was not received at Calcutta till the beginning of March. Before that time, however, intelligence from various quarters had reached them of the fate of Salsette; and they had written letters to Bombay, reprehending the Council, in severe terms, for delaying to send more complete information. Vested with a control over the other presidencies, not well defined, and, by consequence, ill-understood, the Supreme Council were jealous of every appearance of an attempt to originate important measures independently of their authority. This jealousy, and a desire to carry their own importance high, distinguished the party in the new Council, which now, by force of numbers, engrossed the powers of the government. They looked, therefore, with a very evil eye upon the audacity which, in a subordinate Presidency, so near the time when the Supreme Council were to assume the reins of government, ventured upon so great a measure as the conquest of Salsette, without waiting to be authorized by their sanction, or deterred by their prohibition. The letter from Bombay was answered on the 8th of March, with a dry remark, that all observations on the capture of Salsette were rendered useless by the tardiness of the information: The Council, however, declared their express disapprobation of the connexion with Ragoba; and two days after the treaty with that chieftain was signed, commanded that all negotiation with him should be suspended, till further instructions were received. On the 31st of May, arrived from the President and Council of Bombay a letter dated the 31st of March, with information of the conclusion of the treaty with Ragoba, and the departure of the troops for his support. On this occasion the Governor-General took the lead in the condemnation of the President and Council of Bombay; denouncing their procedure as “unseasonable, impolitic, unjust, and unauthorized;” and he proposed, that they should be peremptorily enjoined to cancel the treaty, and to withdraw the troops immediately from assisting Ragoba, except in the three following cases: “1. That they should have obtained any decisive advantages over the enemy; 2. That they should be in such a situation as might render it dangerous to retreat; 3. That a negotiation should have taken place between Ragoba and his opponents.” The Governor-General afterwards professed that he had gone beyond his real sentiments in these terms of condemnation, in hopes to moderate by that means the violence of the opposite party. In this expectation, if ever formed, he found himself deceived. The majority passed two resolutions, which form as singular a combination as the history of practical politics presents. They voted the condemnation of the treaty with Ragoba, and the immediate recall of the troops, subject to no consideration whatever but that of their safety: And they voted that a negotiation should be immediately opened with the Mutseddies, to arrange a treaty of peace, and obtain confirmation of Salsette and Bassein. They condemned the President and Council of Bombay, for taking part in the quarrels of the Mahrattas, and declaring for one party in opposition to another: They themselves performed what they themselves condemned, and were most effectually and irresistibly declaring in favour of the ministers against Ragoba. Other negotiators proceed to discussion with as fair a colour on their pretensions as they can, and as much power in their hands as they are able to retain; not that honourable men will aim at advantages which are unreasonable and unjust; but that they may be secure from the necessity of submitting to any thing which is unreasonable and unjust. The English rulers began with declaring themselves to be in the wrong, and stripping their hands of power; as preliminaries to a negotiation with a people, uniformly insolent and rapacious in proportion to their strength; who never heard the proposal of a concession but as an avowal of weakness; and could not conceive that any government ever yielded any thing which it was able to retain. Of all the courses which it was in the power of the Supreme Council to pursue, they made choice of that which was decidedly the worst. By fulfilling the treaty with Ragoba, they would have easily established his authority, and obtained the important concessions to which he had agreed: If they resolved, as they did, to countenance the ministers, they might, at any rate, have made their terms, before they exalted their pretensions by the annihilation of the power which would have made them compliant: And if they had inclined to act the part of really useful and pacific neighbours, they might have arbitrated between the parties with decisive and happy effect.

The Supreme Council resolved to treat with the ministers at Poona by an agent of their own, without the intervention of the Presidency of Bombay, in whose department the Mahratta country was situated, and who were best acquainted with the character and circumstances of the people.370 Colonel Upton, who was selected for the service, departed on the 17th of July, with letters to Siccaram Baboo, as head of the ministerial party; and with instructions to insist upon Salsette and Bassein, as indispensable conditions in the agreement which was proposed. It is worthy of remark, that he was furnished also with a letter to Ragoba, which was to be presented to that Prince, in case of his success; and then to form an introduction to a negotiation.

A letter from the Governor and Council of Bombay, dated the 22d of August, reached the Supreme Council in the beginning of October. These rulers complained severely of the disgrace which was thrown upon their Presidency, by compelling them to violate a solemn treaty, and depriving them of the power of negotiating with the neighbouring states. Such a loss of dignity in a great branch of the government could not fail, they said, to affect injuriously the interests of the Company. They denied, that they had been guilty of any wilful disrespect to the Supreme Council. The nature of the circumstances required that they should act without delay; the possession of Salsette and Bassein, required that they should declare in favour of one of the Mahratta parties; and many considerations induced them to give the preference to Ragoba. They pointed out the unhappy effects, even upon the negotiation with the ministers, which would result from the recall of the troops, and the ruin of Ragoba; and stated that they had deputed to Calcutta a member of their board, upon whose representations they still hoped, that their treaty would be executed, and that the great advantages of the connexion with Ragoba would not be thrown away. Their deputy displayed both zeal and ability, in his endeavours to make an impression upon the Council. But the majority adhered to their first determinations. Colonel Upton was, however, instructed to make some stipulations in favour of Ragoba; and the Presidency at Bombay was authorized to afford a sanctuary, in case of personal danger, to himself, his family and attendants. That Presidency was also directed, notwithstanding the breach of the treaty with Ragoba, to retain possession of the districts which had been yielded by Futty Sing, till the conclusion of a definitive treaty of peace.

The Council had for some time been waiting with impatience for the account of the arrival of their negotiator at Poona. In the beginning of January, 1776, they received letters from the ministers, which contained a commentary on the policy of annihilating Ragoba, at the moment of commencing a negotiation with his enemies. These letters displayed a high tone of complaint, and even of menace. They expressed a disinclination, on the part of the ministers, to submit their pretensions to discussion; and threatened a renewal of hostility, unless the places which had been taken were immediately restored.

Letters, dated the 5th of January, received from Colonel Upton on the 12th of February, announced his arrival at Poona, and a favourable reception. Other letters received on the 6th of March, and dated on the 2d of February, brought information of difficulties impeding the negotiation. The ministers imagine, says Colonel Upton, “that I must treat with them at any rate:—And that I have vastly exceeded my instructions, by asking a surrender of Salsette and Bassein.” “They ask me,” says he, “a thousand times, Why we make such professions of honour? How disprove the war entered into by the Bombay government; when we are so desirous of availing ourselves of the advantages of it?” Despairing of compliance with all his demands, the Colonel proposed to relax in the affair of Bassein, and to ask for something else in its stead.371

On the 7th of March, a letter dated the 7th of February arrived; and announced that the negotiation was broken off. The ministers insisted upon an immediate renunciation of Salsette, and would not allow so much as time for consulting the government. “In five or six days more,” says the Colonel, “I am to leave Poona Dhur, and they will then fix the time for the expiration of the cessation of arms. I told them, I expected time to advise all our settlements before the renewal of the war; but I suspect them of taking every advantage.” He added, which confirmed the representations made in defence of the connexion with Ragoba, “If three or four companies of Europeans, a small detachment from the corps of artillery, and two or three battalions of Sepoys, were embarked from Bengal to join the army from Bombay, we might soon command peace on our own terms. For the chiefs of this country are quite at a loss which side to take; and are waiting to see what the English do.”372

Upon this intelligence the Council hastened to prepare for war on the largest scale. They resolved, “to support the cause of Ragoba with the utmost vigour; and with a general exertion of the whole power of the English arms in India; to act in all quarters at once; and, by the decision and rapidity of their proceedings, to bring the war, if possible, to a speedy conclusion:” And all this, (namely, a war with the ministers, and alliance with Ragoba, the very measures for which they condemned the Presidency at Bombay), rather than restore Salsette, the capture of which, and the alliance for its support, they had denounced as both impolitic and unjust!

At the conclusion, however, of the month, another letter from Colonel Upton was received. This letter brought intelligence of the final compliance of the ministers on the subject of Salsette. Warlike preparations were then suspended, and a treaty was at last arranged. The English renounced Bassein, and agreed to renounce the cessions in Guzerat, provided it appeared, as the ministers maintained, that Futty Sing was not entitled to make them. The Mahrattas yielded Salsette, and the small adjacent islands, of 3,500,000 rupees revenue; the Mahratta chout, or share of the revenues of Broach, amounting to an equal sum; and a country of three lacs in the neighbourhood of Broach. The members of the Bombay government compared these with the terms which they had obtained from Ragoba; and proclaimed their disapprobation. The concession with respect to Broach, they said, was pretended and delusive, as the Mahrattas had no right to any share of its revenues: The ceded territory, not being jaghire, or free from Mahratta burthens, would be a source of continual disturbance: The relinquishment of the cessions in Guzerat was weakly made upon an unfounded pretence, which actually gave the Guicawars an interest to disclaim the right in dispute: And, upon the whole, the treaty was highly injurious to the reputation, honour, and interests of the Company. The majority in the Supreme Council grounded the defence of their measures upon the utility of peace; and the frequent commands of the Directors to abstain from aggressive war.373

It had been stipulated that Ragoba should disband his army within one month; receive an establishment of 1,000 horse, to be paid and relieved at the pleasure of government, and, of course, to act as his gaolers and guards; enjoy a pension of three lacs of rupees per annum, and reside at an appointed place of abode. With these terms, which he represented as placing him in the hands of his enemies, Ragoba declared his resolution not to comply; and having requested an asylum in one of the Company’s settlements, he was promised, under the licence formerly granted, a sanctuary for himself and his attendants, by the Governor and Council of Bombay. The Mutseddies complained of this act of protection to Ragoba; and alarmed the ruling party in the Supreme Council with menaces that they would renounce the treaty, and betake themselves to war. After violent debates in the Supreme Council, and great diversity of opinion, it was decided by the majority, to condemn the offer made by the President and Council of Bombay of their protection to Ragoba; and to forbid them to receive that chieftain at any of the settlements within the limits of their government. The apprehensions of his enemies were soon after allayed by the defection of his troops. And he retired to Surat with only 200 attendants.

After considerable delay, and a variety of mutual complaints on the part of the Bombay Presidency and the ministers at Poona, the treaty was signed, and transmitted by Colonel Upton to Calcutta, on the 3d of June, 1776. It is peculiarly worthy of notice and remembrance, that intelligence of the conclusion of this affair had not reached the Supreme Council, when letters arrived from the Court of Directors applauding the treaty which the Presidency of Bombay had formed with Ragoba; and commanding their government of Bengal to co-operate for its fulfilment and confirmation. “We approve,” they say, “under every circumstance, of the keeping of all the territories and possessions ceded to the Company by the treaty concluded with Ragoba; and direct that you forthwith adopt such measures as may be necessary for their preservation and defence.”374

During these transactions, the attention of the Supreme Council was not attracted by any great event, towards the powers on the north-western frontier of the Company’s empire. In Oude, Asoff ul Dowla, the New Nabob, had entered upon his government with an exhausted treasury; he was oppressed by the debts due to the Company, and by their importunate demands of payment; his troops were mutinous for want of pay; his inability to maintain them had produced a reduction of his army; he had dismissed the ministers of his father, and surrounded himself with favourites; distraction prevailed in his family and his government; his character was vicious and weak; and every commotion on his frontier alarmed the Supreme Council for the safety of his dominions. Flying parties of the Mahrattas harrassed the neighbouring countries; and reports of more formidable enterprises excited the apprehensions of both the Nabob and his English friends. During the summer of 1776 it was rumoured, that a league had been formed by the Emperor, the Mahrattas, the Seiks, and the Rohillas, to invade the dominions of Asoff ul Dowla. And the Governor General urged the expediency of forming an alliance with Nujeef Khan, to lessen the danger of such an association. After the expedition against Zabita Khan, and the admission of the Mahrattas into Delhi, this leader, through the artifice of a favourite, had fallen into disgrace with his master, and been reduced to the brink of ruin. The necessity of the Emperor’s affairs, and even the recommendation of Sujah Dowla and the English, again restored him to favour; and, in 1773, he engaged in a war with the Jaats, under an understanding that he should retain one half of the territory he should conquer, and resign the other to the Emperor. He had prevailed over the Jaats in the field, and recovered the fort and city of Agra, at the time when the agreement was made, between the Emperor and Vizir, to join in the war against the Rohillas. After his return from Rohilcund, he prosecuted his war with the Jaats; and having driven them, though he was exceedingly distressed for pecuniary means, from the open country, he was besieging the strong fortress of Deig; which, after an obstinate resistance, yielded to his arms; at the time when the situation of the neighbouring powers recommended a connexion with him to the English rulers. The discharge, however, of Sumroo, and a few Frenchmen, from his service, was made an indispensable preliminary; and as he alleged the danger at that moment of sending them to increase the power of his enemies, though he professed the strongest desire to comply with the wishes of the Company, the alliance was for the present obstructed and postponed. The anxiety of Asoff ul Dowla to receive from the Emperor, what still, it seems, was a source of illustration and an object of ambition; the office, though now only nominal, of Vizir; was kept on the rack by various interruptions, by competitors strongly supported, particularly the Nizam, and by the disinclination of the imperial mind. The pescush, however, or appropriate offering, with five thousand men and some artillery, which the Nabob sent to attend the Emperor, arrived at a critical moment, when Zabita Khan had not only evaded payment of the revenue for the country which he possessed, but had taken up arms to support his disobedience; had gained a victory over the Emperor’s forces; and was upon the point of becoming master of Delhi, and of the fate of its lord. The troops of Asoff ad Dowla appeared in time to save this catastrophe; and an imperial representative, in requital of this service, was soon after dispatched to invest the Nabob with the Kelât. By interference, however, of the commander of the Nabob’s detachment, whom Zabita Khan had duly bribed, the helpless Emperor was obliged to confirm that disobedient chief in the territory which he held, and even to remit those arrears of tribute which formed the subject of dispute.375

During the period of those transactions, affairs of a different description had deeply engaged the attention of the Supreme Council, and excited the most violent dissensions. So early as the month of December, 1774, a petition had been presented by the Ranee of Burdwan. This was the title of the widow of Tillook Chund, lately deceased, who, under the title of Rajah, had enjoyed the Zemindary of the district, and whose ancestors, as the representatives of its ancient Rajahs, had enjoyed it in succession through the whole period of Mahomedan sway. Her son, a minor of only nine years of age, had been nominated to the office upon the death of his father; and a considerable share of the power had at first passed into her hands. Afterwards, by the authority of the English government, the young Rajah was withdrawn from the guardianship of the Ranee, and the affairs of the Zemindary were entrusted to administrators of English appointment. She now complained of corrupt administration on the part of the Duan, or chief agent of the Zemindary, and accused the English Resident of supporting him in his iniquity, for the sake of the bribes with which the Duan took care to engage him. The more numerous party in the Council decreed that the Duan should be compelled to render an account of his administration; that the Ranee, agreeably to her petition, should be allowed to repair to Calcutta with her son; and as no inquiry into the conduct of the Duan could be successfully performed, while he retained power over the persons and papers of his office, that a temporary substitute should occupy his place. These resolutions the Governor-General, accompanied by Mr. Barwell, opposed. The Governor-General said, that the presence of the Ranee at Calcutta, whom he described as a troublesome, violent woman, would be not only unnecessary, but inconvenient; that the removal of the Duan from his office before any guilt was proved, would be a violation of justice;376 and the appointment to that office of persons whose qualifications had not been tried, a total departure from policy and prudence. On the 6th of January, 1775, a letter was received from the Resident, against whom the accusations of the Ranee were directed. It was drawn up in a very lofty style; the writer celebrated his own virtues; ascribed a bad character to the Ranee; and expressed the highest indignation, that she had the audacity to prefer an accusation against him. He professed his readiness to submit his conduct to examination; but required, that security should first be demanded of the Ranee to pay an equivalent penalty, in case she failed in the proof of her charges. The pretext for this condition was, its alleged conformity to the laws of the country. To stifle complaint, and to screen misrule, was its natural effect; and upon this consideration the majority of the Council refused to impose it. A variety of accounts were presented to the Board, in which were entered several sums of considerable amount, as paid by the Duan to the servants of the Company and their dependants, not only upon the appointment of the young Rajah, but also upon that of his Duan. Not less than 3,20,975 rupees were charged to the account of the Resident, his banyan, and cash-keeper. Mr. Hastings himself was accused of receiving 15,000 rupees, and his banyan, or native secretary, 4,500; and the whole of the sums represented as thus distributed among the Company’s servants, since the death of the deceased Rajah, amounted to 9,36,497 rupees. The authenticity of these accounts was called in question by the parties whom they affected; and every thing is doubtful which rests upon the authority of Indian witnesses, under strong temptations to depart from truth. Enough does not appear to condemn any individual. Enough appears to render it not doubtful that money was upon this occasion received by the Company’s servants; and enough does not appear to exculpate any individual against whom the charge was advanced. Mr. Hastings now lost his tone of calmness and forbearance. He accused the party in the council, by whom he was opposed, of a design to supersede him in his authority, and to drive him from his office. He pronounced them to be his accusers, parties to the cause against him; and therefore disqualified to sit as judges upon his conduct. He declared that he would not summon or hold councils for “a triumph over himself.” He proposed that whatever inquisition they might choose to make into his conduct, they should make it in a committee; where his absence would save his station and character from degradation and insult; and he declared it to be his resolution to dissolve the council, as often as they should enter upon any criminating inquiry against himself. An occasion soon presented itself for putting his threat in execution. The resolution to compliment the Ranee with the usual insignia of office, he pronounced an insult to himself; declared the Council dissolved, and quitted the chair. The majority resolved that a vote of adjournment could, as all other votes, be passed only by a plurality of the voices present; that if this was not the law, the Governor-General was despotic; and that the right which he claimed was a right of impunity. They voted the first member of the Council into the chair, and continued their proceedings.

On the 30th of March, 1775, another accusation occupied the attention of the Board. In a representation received from one of the natives, it was set fourth, that the Phouzdar of Hoogly was paid by the Company 72,000 rupees as the annual salary of his office; that out of this sum, however, he paid annually to Mr. Hastings 36,000 rupees, together with 4,000 to Mr. Hastings’ native secretary, reserving only 32,000 rupees to himself; and that the author of this representation would undertake the duties of the office for this reduced allowance, producing an annual saving to the Company of 40,000 rupees, now corruptly received by Mr. Hastings and his banyan. The first debate which rose upon this information regarded the competence of the board to entertain such complaints. Mr. Hastings’ party, consisting of Mr. Barwell and himself, opposed the reception of any accusations against any individual of the board; and referred to the courts of justice. The major party deemed it an important article of the duty of the Supreme Council to control abuses, and not least in the hands of those who had the greatest power to commit them. It is no sufficient check, upon those who are entrusted with power, to be amenable for legal crimes in a court of justice. The analogies of the most vulgar trust shed light upon the highest. Who would endure a servant, pretending that his conduct ought not to be challenged but in a court of justice; his trust modified, or withdrawn, till after the judicial proof of a legal crime? When this plea was over-ruled, and the council were about to enter upon the investigation, Mr. Hastings declared that “he would not sit to be confronted with such accusers, nor to suffer a judicial inquiry into this conduct, at the board of which he is President.” As formerly, he pronounced the Council dissolved; and the majority continued their proceedings in his absence. Two letters of the Phouzdar in question were produced in evidence; and two witnesses were examined. The Phouzdar himself was summoned to answer. At first he alleged excuses for delay. When he did appear, he declined examination upon oath; on the pretence that to persons of his rank it was a degradation to confirm their testimony by that religious ceremony. In this scrupulosity, he was strongly supported by Mr. Hastings; but the majority construed it into a contempt of the Board; and dismissed the Phouzdar from his office, which they conferred, not upon the accusing petitioner, but another individual, at one half of the preceding salary, 36,000 rupees. The majority of the Council esteemed the evidence of the charge complete. The party of the Governor-General, representing the testimony of the natives of India when they have any motive to falsify, as little worthy of trust, and the known disposition of the leading party in the Council as holding forth inducement to accuse, affirmed that the evidence had no title to regard. The eagerness of the Governor-General to stifle, and his exertions to obstruct inquiry, on all occasions where his conduct came under complaint, constituted in itself an article of proof, which added materially to the weight of whatever came against him from any other source.

Another ground of charge presented itself in the following manner. On the 2d of May, 1775, Mr. Grant, accountant to the provincial council of Moorshedabad, produced to the board a set of accounts, relating to the affairs of the Nabob; and stated that he had received them from a native, now in his own service, who had till lately been a clerk in the treasury office of the Nabob. From these accounts it appeared that Munny Begum, since her appointment to the superintendence of the Nabob’s person and affairs, had received 9,67,693 rupees, over and above what she appeared to have disbursed or had accounted for. Upon examination of Mr. Grant, and of the clerk from whom the accounts were received, the majority of the council were induced to regard them as authentic. Among other circumstances it was stated by the clerk, that the head eunuch of the Begum, the person who stood highest in her confidence, had endeavoured, upon hearing of such accounts in the hands of the clerk, to prevail upon him, by the prospect of rewards and advantages, to restore the papers, and return to the service of the Begum; and Mr. Grant was ready to state upon his oath that similar attempts had been made upon himself. The party opposed to the Governor-General thought the circumstances sufficiently strong to render inquiry necessary, and to authorise the steps which inquiry demanded. They proposed, that a servant of the Company should immediately be sent to Moorshedabad, invested with a proper commission and powers; and that the Begum, for the investigation of whose conduct no satisfactory evidence could be procured, while she retained authority over the officers and servants of the Nabob, should be divested of her power. The Governor-General, on the other hand, questioned the authority of the papers, resisted the proposal to inquire into the accounts of the Begum, and protested against removing her from her office, while no proof of her misconduct was adduced.377 By decision however of the majority, Mr. Goring was dispatched for the investigation; the power of the Begum was withdrawn; and Rajah Gourdass, the son of Nuncomar, Duan, or principal Minister of the Begum, received the temporary charge of the Nabob’s affairs. Inquiry seemed to establish the authenticity of the papers. The Begum, when pressed to account for the balance with which she was charged, stated, among other circumstances, that 1,50,000 rupees had been given to Mr. Hastings, under the name of entertainment money, when he went to Moorshedabad in 1772, and placed her at the head of the Nabob’s establishment. She also represented that on the same occasion 1,50,000 rupees had been given by her as a present to Mr. Middleton. Of the sum thus delivered to Mr. Middleton (for the receipt of it was never denied), no account was ever rendered, and no defence was ever set up. Mr. Hastings justified the receipt of what was bestowed upon himself, on the several pleas, that the act of parliament which prohibited presents was not then passed, that such allowances were the common custom of the country, that a Nabob of Bengal received on the same account 1000 rupees a day as often as he visited the Governor in Calcutta, that he added nothing to his fortune by this allowance, and must have charged to the company a sum as large, if this had not been received.378 Upon part of this it is necessary to remark, that custom, the custom of a country, where almost every thing was corrupt, affords but a sorry defence; that if a visit to the Nabob was a thing of so much expense it ought not to have been made without an adequate cause; that no adequate cause, if the receipt of the present be excluded, can any where be found; that for the necessity of a great expense on such a visit, or indeed of any extraordinary expense at all, we have barely the assertion of the Governor-General, which being the assertion of a party making out a case in his own defence, and an assertion opposed to probability, possesses but little of the force of proof. Besides, the amount is enormous; 2000 rupees per day; 7,30,000 rupees, or 73,000l. per annum. What should have made living at Moorshedabad cost the Governor-General at the rate of 73,000l. per annum? And why should the Nabob, whose allowance was understood to be cut down to the lowest point, have been oppressed by so enormous a burden? Another consideration of importance is, that when Mr. Hastings received the sum of one lac and a half of rupees for entertainment money, he at the same time charged to the Company a large sum, 30,000 rupees and upwards, as travelling charges, and a great additional amount for his colleagues and attendants.379 The complaints of severe usage to the Begum, advanced both by herself and by Hastings, appear to have had no other foundation than the loss of her office; an office which the majority considered her sex as disqualifying her to fill; and to which they treated her appointment as one of the errors or crimes of the preceding administration.

Of the different charges, however, brought against the Governor-General, those which were produced by the Rajah Nuncomar were attended with the most remarkable circumstances. From this personage, whom we have seen Phouzdar of Hoogly, minister of the Nabob Jaffier Khan, the agent of Mr. Hastings in the prosecution of Mahomed Reza Khan, and whose son was appointed Duan of the household to the Nabob, which son it was regulated and ordained that he should guide, a paper was delivered on the 11th of March, which, besides accusing the Governor-General of overlooking the proof of vast embezzlements committed by Mahomed Reza Khan and Shitabroy, and of acquitting them in consideration of large sums of money by which he was bribed, exhibited the particulars of a sum amounting to 3,54,105 rupees, which, it affirmed, the Governor-General accepted, for the appointment of Munny Begum, and Goordass, to their respective dignities and powers. In prosecution of the opinion of the majority that it was the duty of the Supreme Council to inquire into the charges which were brought against the members of the government, and to control the conduct even of the highest officers of state, it was on the 13th proposed, that Nuncomar should be summoned to appear before them, and called upon to produce the grounds of his accusation. Mr. Hastings, instead of choosing to confront his accuser, and to avail himself of the advantage of innocence, in hearing and challenging the pretences of a false accusation, resisted inquiry. “Before the question is put,” says his Minute, “I declare that I will not suffer Nuncomar to appear before the Board as my accuser. I know what belongs to the dignity and character of the first member of this administration. I will not sit at this Board in the character of a criminal. Nor do I acknowledge the members of this Board to be my judges. I am reduced on this occasion to make the declaration that I regard General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, as my accusers.” The Governor-General, with Mr. Barwell, again recommended prosecution at law, not inquiry before the Council, as the mode of investigating his conduct. Again he pronounced the Council dissolved, and, together with Mr. Barwell, quitted the Board. Again the majority voted this form of dissolution void, and continued the inquiry. Nuncomar made positive declaration as to the sums which he himself had paid to the Governor; gave in the names of several persons who were privy to the transactions; and presented a letter, in purport from Munny Begum to himself, of which the seal, upon comparison, by the Persian translator and his moonshee, was declared to be authentic; and in which a gift was stated of two lacs to the Governor from himself. Upon this evidence the Governor was called upon to refund to the Company the money which he had thus illegally received. But he refused to acknowledge the majority as a council, and returned no answer.

Nothing surely can be more inadmissible than the pretences of the Governor-General for stifling inquiry. What he alleged was, the dignity of the accused, and the baseness of the accuser. If dignity in the accused be a sufficient objection to inquiry, the responsibility of the leading members of every government is immediately destroyed; all limitation of their power is ended; and all restraint upon misconduct is renounced. If the character of the accuser is bad, so much the greater is the advantage of the accused; because so much the more easy it is to counterbalance the evidence of his testimony. So great may be the improbability of a charge, and so little the value of an accuser’s testimony, that the first may outweigh the latter, and preclude the propriety of any further research. But where the case is in any degree different from this, the character of the informer is not a sufficient objection to inquiry. It is often from men of the worst character that the most important intelligence is most likely to be received; and it is only necessary in receiving it to make those abatements of belief which the character of the informant may appear to require. Perpetual reference to the courts of law, as the only place where inquiry into the conduct of an officer of government could fitly be made, merits the highest condemnation; because the conduct of a member of government may be evil to almost any degree, may involve his country in ruin, and yet may be incapable of being touched by courts of law, constituted and conducted as those of England. It is another species of superintendance and control which must ensure good conduct in those who are vested with great public trusts. In disclaiming the majority for his judges, the Governor availed himself of an ambiguity in the word. They did not undertake the office of judgment. They only held it their duty to inquire, for the benefit of those who might afterwards judge.

In this case, the Governor-General was not satisfied with crying out against inquiry. He took the extraordinary resolution of prosecuting with all the weight of his authority the man by whom he was accused. An indictment, at the instance of the Governor-General, of Mr. Barwell, of Mr. Vansittart, of Mr. Hastings’ Banyan, and of the Roy Royan or head native agent of finance, was preferred against Nuncomar, together with Messrs. Joseph and Francis Fowke, for a conspiracy to force a man named Commaul ad dien Khan, to write a petition against the parties to the prosecution. After an examination before the judges, Mr. Francis Fowke was discharged; and Mr. Barwell, the Roy Royan, and the Governor’s Banyan, withdrew their names from the prosecution. The Governor and Mr. Vansittart persevered; and Nuncomar and Mr. Joseph Fowke were held to bail at their instance. “The truth is, as we,” says the minute of Clavering, Monson, and Francis, on the 16th of May, “have reason to believe, that there never existed such a paper as has been sworn to; and that every particular said to be contained in it is an imposition invented by Commaul ad Dien.” A few days after this suspicious, but ineffectual proceeding, a new prosecution was instituted against Nuncomar. At the suit of a native, he was taken up on a charge of forgery, and committed to the common gaol. He was tried before the Supreme Court, by a jury of Englishmen, convicted, and hanged. No transaction perhaps of this whole administration more deeply tainted the reputation of Hastings than the tragedy of Nuncomar. At the moment when he stood forth as the accuser of the Governor-General, he was charged with a crime, alledged to have been committed five years before; tried, and executed; a proceeding which could not fail to generate the suspicion of guilt, and of an inability to encounter the weight of his testimony, in the man whose power to have prevented, or to have stopped (if he did not cause) the prosecution, it is not easy to deny. As Hastings, aware of the sinister interpretations to which the destruction of an accuser, in circumstances so extraordinary, would assuredly expose him, chose rather to sustain the weight of those suspicions, than to meet the charges by preventing or suspending the fate of the accuser; it is a fair inference, though mere resentment and spite might hurry some men to as great an indiscretion, that from the accusations he dreaded something worse than those suspicions. Mr. Francis, in his examination before the House of Commons, on the 16th of April, 1788, declared that the effect of this transaction upon the inquiries carried on by the Board into the accusations against the Governor, was, “to defeat them; that it impressed a general terror on the natives with respect to preferring accusations against men in great power; and that he and his coadjutors were unwilling to expose them to what appeared to him and these coadjutors, as well as themselves, a manifest danger.”

The severest censures were very generally passed upon this trial and execution; and it was afterwards exhibited as matter of impeachment against both Mr. Hastings, and the Judge who presided in the tribunal. The crime for which Nuncomar was made to suffer, was not a capital offence, by the laws of Hindustan, either Moslem or Hindu; and it was represented as a procedure full of cruelty and injustice, to render a people amenable to the most grievous severities of a law with which they were unacquainted, and from which, by their habits and associations, their minds were totally estranged. It was affirmed; That this atrocious condemnation and execution were upon an ex post facto law, as the statute which created the Supreme Court and its powers was not published till 1774, and the date of the supposed forgery was in 1770: That the law which rendered forgery capital did not extend to India, as no English statute included the colonies, unless where it was expressly stated in the law: That Nuncomar, as a native Indian, for a crime committed against another Indian, not an Englishman, or even a European, was amenable to the native, not the English tribunals: That the evidence adduced was not sufficient to warrant condemnation: And that although the situation in which the prisoner was placed with regard to a man of so much power as the Governor-General should have suggested to the Judge peculiar circumspection and tenderness, there was every appearance of precipitation, and of a predetermination to find him guilty, and to cut him off. In the defence which was set up by Sir Elijah Impey, the Chief Judge, in his answer at the bar of the House of Commons on the 12th of December, 1787, he admitted that a native inhabitant of the provinces at large was not amenable to the English laws, or to the English tribunals: and it was not as such, he affirmed, that Nuncomar was tried. But he maintained that a native inhabitant of the English town of Calcutta, which was English property, which had long been governed by Englishmen, and English laws, was amenable to the English tribunals, and justly, because he made it his voluntary choice to live under their protection; and that it was in this capacity, namely that of an inhabitant of Calcutta, that Nuncomar suffered the penalties of the English laws. If the competency of the jurisdiction was admitted, the question of evidence, where evidence was complicated and contradictory, could not admit of any very clear and certain decision; and the Judge opposed the affirmation of its insufficiency by that of the contrary. He denied the doctrine that an English penal statute extended to the colonies, only when that extension was expressed. The allegation of precipitation and unfairness, still further of corruption, in the treatment of the accused, he not only denied with strong expressions of abhorrence, but by a specification of circumstances endeavoured to disprove. It was, however, affirmed, that Nuncomar was not an inhabitant of Calcutta at the time when the offence was said to have been committed; but a prisoner brought and detained there by constraint. The Chief Justice, on the other hand, maintained that not only was no evidence to this fact exhibited on the trial, but evidence to the contrary, and that not opposed. It does indeed appear that an omission, contrary to the intent of the framers, in the Charter of Justice granted the Company in 1753, had afforded a pretext for that extension of jurisdiction over the inhabitants of Calcutta, under which Impey sheltered himself. In establishing the civil court for the administration of the English laws, this charter expressly excepted “such suits as shall be between Indian natives, which shall be determined among themselves, unless both parties consent.” In establishing the penal court, the reservation of the natives, having once been expressed, was not repeated; and of this opening the servants of the Company had availed themselves, whenever they chose, to extend over the natives the penalties of English law. That the intention of the charter was contrary, appeared by its sanctioning a separate court, called the Phousdary, for the trial of all offences of the native inhabitants; a court which, under the intention of rendering natives as well as English amenable to the English criminal laws, would have been totally without a purpose.380 Of the evidence it may fairly be observed, that though the forgery was completely proved by the oaths of the witnesses to the prosecution, it was as completely disproved by the oaths of the witnesses to the defence; that there was no such difference in the character of the parties or their witnesses as to throw the balance greatly to either of the sides; and that the preponderance, if any, was too weak, to support an act of so much importance and delicacy, as the condemnation of Nuncomar. Even after the judgment, the case was not without a remedy; the execution might have been staid till the pleasure of the King was known, and a pardon might have been obtained. This too the Court absolutely refused; and proceeded with unrelenting determination to the execution of Nuncomar; who, on the 5th of August, with a tranquillity and firmness that never were surpassed, submitted to his fate, not only amid the tears and lamentations, but the cries and shrieks of an extraordinary assemblage of his countrymen.

There was, perhaps, enough to save the authors of this transaction, on the rigid interpretation of naked law. But that all regard to decorum, to the character of the English government, to substantial justice, to the prevention of misrule, and the detection of ministerial crimes, was sacrificed to personal interests, and personal passions, the impartial inquirer cannot hesitate to pronounce.381

Among the regulations of the financial system, formed and adopted in 1772, under the authority of Mr. Hastings, the seventeenth article was expressed in the following words; “That no Peshcar, Banyan, or other servant of whatever denomination, of the collector, or relation or dependant of any such servant, be allowed to farm lands, nor directly or indirectly to hold a concern in any farm, nor to be security for any farmer; and if it shall appear, that the collector shall have countenanced, approved, or connived at a breach of this regulation, he shall stand ipso facto dismissed from his collectorship.” These regulations had the advantage of being accompanied with a running commentary, in a corresponding column of the very page which contained the text of the law; the commentary proceeding from the same authority as the law, and exhibiting the reasons on which it was founded. The commentary on the article in question, stated, that, “If the collector or any persons who partake of his authority, are permitted to be farmers of the country, no other persons will dare to be their competitors. Of course they will obtain the farms on their own terms. It is not fit that the servants of the Company should be dealers with their masters. The collectors are checks on the farmers. If they themselves turn farmers, what checks can be found for them? What security will the Company have for their property? Or where are the ryots to look for protection?”382 Notwithstanding this law, it appeared that Mr. Hastings’s own Banyan had, in the year 1773, possessed, or was concerned in the farm of no less than nineteen pergunnahs, or districts, in different parts of Bengal, the united rent-roll of which was 13,33,664 rupees; that in 1774, the rent-roll of the territory so farmed was 13,46,152 rupees; in 1775, 13,67,796 rupees; that in 1776, it was 13,88,346 rupees; and in 1777, the last year of the existing or quinquennial settlement, it was 14,11,885 rupees. It also appeared that, at the end of the second year, he was allowed to relinquish three of the farms, on which there was an increasing rent. This proceeding was severely condemned by the Directors; and Mr. Hastings himself, beyond affirming that he had no share in the profits, and that little or none were made, alleged but little in its defence.383

For the affairs of the Nabob, and that part of the business of government, still transacted in his name, a substitute to Munny Begum, and to the plan superseded by her removal, was urgently required. In their letter of the 3d of March, 1775, the Directors had declared Mahomed Reza Khan to be so honourably cleared of the suspicions and charges with which he had been clouded, and Nuncomar to be so disgraced by his attempts to destroy him, that they directed his son, who was no more than the tool of the father, to be removed from his office; and Mahomed Reza Khan to be appointed in his stead. It is remarkable, that the Directors were so ignorant of the government of India, which it belonged to them to conduct, that they mistook the name of the office of Gourdass, who was the agent for paying the Nabob’s servants, and the substitute for Munny Begum, when any of the affairs was to be transacted to which the fiction of the Nabob’s authority was still applied, for that of the officer who was no more than the head of the native clerks in the office of revenue at Calcutta. When they directed Gourdass to be replaced by Mahomed Reza, they distinguished him by the title of Roy Royan; and thence enlarged the ground of cavil and dispute between the contending parties in the Council. Clavering, Francis, and Monson, decided for uniting in the hands of Mahomed Reza Khan the functions which had been divided between Munny Begum and Rajah Gourdass; and as Rajah Gourdass, notwithstanding the prejudices against his father, was recommended by the Directors to some inferior office, the same party proposed to make him Roy Royan, and to remove Rajah Bullub, the son of Dooloob Ram, by whom that office had hitherto been held.

As the penal department of justice was ill administered in the present Fousdary courts (that branch of the late arrangements had totally failed); and as the superintendance of criminal justice, entrusted to the Governor-General, as head of the Nizamut Adaulut, or Supreme Penal Court of Calcutta, loaded him with a weight of business, and of responsibility, from which he sought to be relieved, the majority agreed to restore to Mahomed Reza Khan, the superintendence of penal justice, and of the native penal courts throughout the country; and for that purpose to remove the seat of the Nizamut Adaulut from Calcutta back to Moorshedabad. The Governor-General agreed that the orders of the Directors required the removal of Gourdass from the office which he held under Munny Begum, and the appointment to that office of Mahomed Reza Khan; but he dissented from all the other parts of the proposed arrangement; and treated the renewal of the title of Naib Subah, and the affectation of still recognizing the Nabob’s government, as idle grimace. “All the arts of policy cannot,” he said, “conceal the power by which these provinces are ruled, nor can all the arts of sophistry avail to transfer the responsibility to the Nabob; when it is as visible as the light of the sun, that every act originates from our own government, that the Nabob is a mere pageant without the shadow of authority, and even his most consequential agents receive their express nomination from the servants of the Company.”384 The opposing party, however, thought it would be still political, to uphold the pretext of “a country government,” for managing all discussions with foreign factories. And if ultimately it should, they say, “be necessary to maintain the authority of the country government by force, the Nabob will call upon us for that assistance, which we are bound by treaty to afford him, and which may be effectually employed in his name.” That party possessed the majority of votes, and their schemes, of course, were carried into execution.385

end of vol. iii.
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Re: The History of British India, Vol. III, by James Mill

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Part 1 of 3

Notes:

1. Committees; i. e. Persons to whom something is committed, or entrusted.
2. Letters Patent, 10 Will. III., Collection of Charters, &c.
3. Not in the East India Company alone; in the Bank of England also, the constitution of which is similar, oligarchy has always prevailed. Nor will the circumstances be found to differ in any joint stock association in the history of British Commerce. So little does experience countenance the dangerous maxim, of the people’s being always eager to grasp at too much power, that the great difficulty, in regard to good government, is, to get them really to exercise that degree of power, their own exercise of which good government absolutely requires.
4. The following account is derived from an official report on the business of the Committees, called for by the Board of Control, and transmitted officially by the Court of Directors, of which the substance is given in Mr. Bruce’s Historical View of Plans for the Government of British India, p. 600.
5. Custom House accounts. See Sir Charles Whitworth’s Tables, p. 9.
6. Try, for example, the sum of the exports for twenty years from 1710, in Sir Charles Whitworth’s Tables, and that in the Company’s accounts; the table, for instance, No. 7, in the Appendix to Mr. Macpherson’s History of European Commerce with India. See too, the averages in Bruce’s Historical View of Plans for British India, p. 295.
7. Ninth bye-law of the Company, in Russel’s Collection of Statutes.
8. The obstinate adherence of the natives to their established customs, renders it not easy to quit the track which on any occasion they have formed; and under the ignorance of their manners and character which distinguishes the greater proportion of the Company’s servants, it would be mischievous to attempt it. Where the agent however is intelligent, and acquainted with the language and manners of the people, he does simplify and improve the business to a certain degree; and were it performed by men who had an interest to establish themselves in the country, and who would make it a business, it would gradually acquire that rational form which the interests of a rational people would recommend.
9. Seventh Report from the Committee of Secresy on the State of the East India Company, in 1773.
10. See Ninth Report, Select Committee, 1783, p. 11.
11. Anderson s History of Commerce, Anno 1727.
12. Anderson’s History of Commerce, A. D. 1719.
13. Sir Charles Whitworth’s Tables, part i. p. 78.
14. Third Report from the Secret Committee of the House of Commons, on the State of the East India Company, in 1773, p. 73.
15. 10 Ann c 28. See Collection of Statutes, p. 42.
16. Anderson’s Hist. of Commerce, A. D. 1716 and 1718, and Collection of Statutes.
17. See Coxe’s Memoirs of Sir Robert, and Lord Walpole, and Hist. of the House of Austria, ad annos.
18. 5 Geo. I. c. 24; 7 Geo. I. c. 21; 9 Geo. I. c. 26.
19. Collection of Statutes, p. 50.
20. Orme’s History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in India, i. 17–19. Seer Mutakhareen, i. 17 and 296.
21. He is named Caundorah by Mr. Orme (Ibid. p. 20), who erroneously makes Houssein, instead of Abdoolah Khan, vizir.
22. This incident is related with some additional circumstances by Scott, History of Aurungzebe’s Successors, p. 139. From the manner in which he speaks of the Emperor’s disease (he speaks very vaguely), he appears not to have thought it of the sort which is generally represented; the question is of small importance.
23. Orme, Hist. ut supra, ii. 20–25.
24. See a distinct summary of the proposals, and of the arguments pro and con. in Anderson’s Hist. of Commerce, A. D. 1730. For the proceedings in parliament, consult the Journals, with Boyer’s Political State, and Hansard’s Parliamentary Hist.
25. It was asserted by the merchants, and, as far as appears, without contradiction, that foreigners possessed at least a third part of the stock of the East India Company; and one third of their gain was thus made for the benefit of other countries. Political State, A. D. 1730, xxxix. 240.
26. As a corporate body is seldom hurt by its modesty, the Company alleged that they had a right, by a preceding act of parliament, to the monopoly in perpetuity; but to avoid disputes, they consented to wave this claim, for a certainty of thirty-six years. 3 Geo. II. c. 14. Collection of Statutes, p. 73. Anderson, ad an. 1730. Political State. xxxix. 258.
27. Sir Charles Whitworth’s Tables, part ii. p. 9.
28. Third Report of the Committee of Secrecy, on the State of the East India Company, (House of Commons, 1773,) p. 75.
29. Ibid. p. 73.
30. Histoire Philosoph. et Polit. des Establissemens, &c. dans les Deux Indes, par Guillaume Thomas Raynal, liv. ii. sect. 21. Table at the end of the vol.
31. Anderson’s Hist. of Commerce, ad an. 1744; Collection of Statutes, p. 84, 17 Geo. II. c. 17.
32. Memoire pour Labourdonnais, i. 124. Mr. Orme, i. 67, says the third, the difference being that of the stiles: The old stile, it appears, was used by the English historian.
33. Memoire, ut supra, p. 125. Orme, p. 67.
34. Memoire pour Labourdonnais, i. 126–142. Orme, i. 64–69.
35. Raynal, ii. 271. Memoire pour Labourdonnais, i. 88, 95. Orme, i. 92.
36. Memoire, ut supra, p. 94. Raynal, ut supra, p. 217.
37. Memoire pour Labourdonnais, i. 95. Memoire contre Dupleix, p. 8.
38. Raynal, liv. iv. sect. 20.
39. This seems to be the same invention exactly with that of Captain Manby, for throwing a rope on board a vessel threatened with shipwreck. See an essay on the Preservation of Shipwrecked Persons by G. W. Manby, Esq. and Memoire pour Labourdonnais, i. 80. The obvious expedient of training the sailors for land operations is of high importance; and it argues little for the heads of those who have conducted enterprises in which the mariners might have been, or were to be, employed for laud operations, that such training has so rarely been resorted to. How much more instructive, than that of the vulgar details of war, is the contemplation of the ingenuity, the industry, and the perseverance of such a man as Labourdonnais, in the various critical situations in which he was placed!
40. For the above details respecting Labourdonnais, see Memoire, ut supra, pp. 10–92.
41. Orme, i. 60–63.
42. Orme, i. pp. 62, 63. Memoire, ut supra, pp. 88–90. Mr Orme says, the challenge of Labourdonuais was only a feint, and that he was in no condition to renew the engagement; he himself in the Memoire, says, that it was not a feint, and that ce fut avec un extreme regret qu’il vit les Anglots lui échapper.
43. The character he manifested at school bears a resemblance to what is reported of Napoleon Bonaparté “La passion avec laquelle il se livra à l’etude des mathematiques, le degout qu’elle lui inspira pour tous les arts aimables qui ne lui paroissoient que frivoles, le charactere taciturne, distrait, et meditatif, qu’elle parut lui donner, et la retraite qu’elle lui faisoit toujours preferer aux amusemens ordinaires de la société.” Memoire pour Dupleix, p. 9. The coincidence in character with these men of another remarkable personage, Frederick the Great of Prussia, while a boy, is perhaps worth the remarking. His sister says, “Il avoit de l’esprit; son humeur etoit sombre et taciturne; il pensoit long temps, avant que de repondre, mais, en recompense, il repondoit juste.” Memoires de Frederique Sophie Wilhelmine de Prusse, Margrave de Bareith, i. 8–22.
44. Memoire pour Dupleix, pp. 9–26.
45. Labourdonnais (Memoire, i. 109) does not state the number of the guns from Pondicherry with which he was obliged to content himself. Orme, i. 64. says he obtained thirty or forty pieces; but it is a grievous defect of Mr. Orme’s history, that he never gives his authorities.
46. Memoire pour Labourdonnais, ut supra, p. 110, and Orme, p. 64, who here adopts the account of Labourdonnais.
47. Il est expressément défendu au sieur de la Bourdonnais de s’emparer d’aucun etablissement ou comptoir des ennemis pour le conserver. Mem. p. 105. This was signed by M. Orry, Controuleur General. It appears, by the orders both to Labourdonnais and Dupleix, that the French government, and East India Company, shrunk from all idea of conquest in India.
48. Memoire, ut supra, pp. 142–220. Orme, i. 69–72. Dupleix, in his apology, involves the cause of his opposition to Labourdonnais in mystery. It was a secret, forsooth! And a secret, too, of the ministry and the company! The disgrace, then, was tripartite; Great consolation to Labourdonnais! And great satisfaction to the nation! “Le Sieur Dupleix,” says the Memoire, “respecte trop les ordres du ministere et ceux de la Compagnie pour oser publier ici ce qu’il lui a été enjoint d’ensevelir dans le plus profond secret:” p. 27. In the usual style of subterfuge and mystery, this is ambiguous and equivooal. The word ordres may signify orders given him to behave as he did to Labourdonnais; and this is the sense in which it is understood by Voltaire, who says, “Le gouverneur Dupleix s’excusa daus ses Memoires sur des ordres secrets du ministère. Mais il n’avait pu recevoir à six mille lieues des ordres concernant une conquête qu’on venait de faire, et que le ministère de France n’avait jamais pu prevoir. Si ces ordres funestes avaient été donnés par prevoyance, ils etorent formellement contradictoires avec ceux que la Bourdonnais avait apportés. Le ministère aurart eu à se reprocher la perte de neuf millions dont on priva la France en violant la capitulation, mais sur-tout le cruel traitement dont il paya le genie, la valeur, et la magnanimité de la Bourdonnais.” Fragm. Histor. sur l’ Inde, Art. 3. But the word ordres may also signify orders merely not to disclose the pretended secret. This is a species of defence which ought ever to be suspected; for it may as easily be applied to the greatest villainy as to the greatest worth, and is far more likely to be so.
49. Orme, i. 69, 73.
50. Memoire, ut supra, pp. 221–280. Orme, i. 72, Raynal, liv. iv. sect. 20. Voltaire, amid other praises, says of him, “Il fit plus; il dispersa une escadre Angloise dans la mer de l’Inde, ce qui n’etoit jamais arrivé qu’ à lui, et ce qu’on n’a pas revu depuis” Fragm. Histor. sur l’Inde, Art. 3.
51. Memoire pour Dupleix, p. 28; Mem. pour Labourdonnais, i. 243. “It was now more than a century,” (says Mr. Orme, i. 76) “since any of the European nations had gained a decisive advantage in war against the officers of the Great Mogul. The experience of former unsuccessful wars, and the scantiness of military abilities which prevailed in all the colonies From a long disuse of arms, had persuaded them that the Moors were a brave and formidable enemy; when the French at once broke through the charm of this timorous opinion, by defeating a whole army with a single battalion.”
52. Mem. pour Labourdonnais, i. 252. Orme, i. 77. Dupleix, in his Apology, (Mem. p. 27) declines defending this breach of faith, repeating the former pretence of secrecy—to which, he says, the Ministry and the Company enjoined him. Experience justifies three inferences; 1. That the disgrace was such as explanation would enhance; 2. that the Ministry and the Company were sharers in it; 3. that having such partners, his safety did not depend upon his justification. He adds, that it is certain he was innocent, because the Ministry and the Company continued to employ him. It was certain, either that he was innocent, or that the Ministry and the Company were sharers in his guilt. And it was a maxim at that time in France, that a Ministry never can have guilt: If so, the inference was logical.
53. Orme, i. 78.
54. The two important discoveries for conquering India were; 1st, the weakness of the native armies against European discipline; 2dly, the facility of imparting that discipline to natives in the European service. Both discoveries were made by the French.
55. Orme, i. 79–83.
56. Memoire pour Labourdonnais, i. 259. Memoire pour Dupleix, p. 29. Orme, i. 84, 85.
57. So says Dupleix himself, Mem. p. 29.
58. Orme, i. 87. Mem. pour Dupleix, p. 29.
59. Orme, i. 66, 87, 88.
60. Orme, i. 88–91. Orme says that 200 soldiers only were landed by the French at Madras. Dupleix himself says, Trois cens hommes, tant sains que malades. Mem. p. 32.
61. Orme, i. 91–98.
62. Memoire pour Dupleix, p. 31, 32.
63. Orme, i. 80, 98–106. Dupleix (Mem. p. 32) says that the trenches were open forty-two days, and that the siege altogether lasted fifty-eight. The memoir drawn up by the French East India Company, in answer to Dupleix, alleges more than once that Dupleix was defective in personal courage; and says he apologized for the care with which he kept at a distance from shot, by acknowledging que le bruit des armes suspendoit ses reflexions, et que le calme seul convenoit à son genie: p. 18.
64. Orme, i. 107, 75, 131.
65. Orme, ii. 45.
66. Report, ut supra, p. 74.
67. Whitworth’s Tables, part i. p. 78.
68. Vide supra. Also Aurungzebe’s Operations in Deccan, by Scott, p. 6.
69. History and Management of the East India Company, from an authentic MS. account of Tanjore. See also Orme, i. 108, who in some particulars was misinformed.
70. “The meaning of this letter is to let your Majesty know, I shall esteem it a great honour to be upon such terms with your Majesty, as may be convenient to both; for which reason, I hope, this will meet with a gracious acceptance, as likewise the few things I send with it.” Letter from Governor Floyer to Pretaupa Sing, King of Tanjore, dated 30th Nov. 1746.—“I received your letter, and am glad to hear of the King of Tanjore’s regard and civility towards the English: You may be assured, that after the arrival of our ships, which will be very soon, I will serve the King, and all the people that will do us good against the French, who are enemies to all the world.” Letter from Governor Floyer to Maccajeeniko, officer of the King of Tanjore, dated 3d Jan. 1747.—“This is to acquaint your Majesty of the good news we have received from Europe two days past. The French nation (enemies both to your Majesty and the English) had fitted out a force with design to drive the English out of India; and had they been successful, they would never have stopped there; but would have made settlements in whatever parts of your country they liked best; as they have already done at Carical. But it pleased God, that their vile designs have been prevented; for our ships met them at sea, and took and destroyed the whole of them. …I do not at all doubt, but that in a short time we shall be able to put you in possession of Carical, which I hear you so much wish for.” Letter from Governor Floyer to the King of Tanjore dated 19th Jan. 1748. See i. 25, 26, of a Collection of Papers, entitled Tanjore Papers, published by the East India Company in three 4to. volumes, in 1777, as an Appendix to a vindication of the Company, drawn up by their counsel Mr. Rous, in answer to two pamphlets; one entitled “State of Facts relative to Tanjore;” the other, “Original Papers relative to Tanjore.” This collection of papers, I shall commonly quote, under the short title of Rous’s Appendix.
71. Orme, i. 109–119. History and Management of the East India Company, p. 68–70.
72. History and Management, p. 69.
73. This is stated by Orme, (ii. 318) who tells us not who this uncle was (he must have been maternal), but only that he was the guide of his nephew, and the head of his party.
74. According to Colonel Wilks, (p. 5) the ancient name was Canara, and the Canara language is only found within a district bounded by a line, beginning near the town of Beder, about sixty miles N. W. from Hyderabad, waving S. E. by the town of Adoni, then to the west of Gooti, next by the town of Anantpoor, next Nundidroog, next to the eastern Ghauts, thence along the range of the eastern Ghauts southwards to the pass of Gujjelhutty, thence by the chasm of the western hills, between the towns of Coimbetoor, Palatchi, and Palgaut, thence northwards along the skirts of the western Ghauts, nearly as far as the sources of the Kistna, thence in an eastern and afterwards north eastern direction to Beder. He adds, p. 6, that the Tamul language was spoken in the tract extending from Pullicat, (the boundary of the Talinga language on the south) to Cape Comorin, and from the sea to the eastern Ghauts. This tract bore, anciently, the name of Drauveda, “although,” says the Colonel, “the greater part of it is known to Europeans exclusively by the name of Carnatic.” It was called by the Mahomedans Carnatic below the Ghauts, as Canara proper was called Carnatic above the Ghauts.
75. By Mr. Orme, i. 41. Col. Wilks, states on verbal authority, that the Mahrattas were invited by the eldest son of the Nabob, jealous of Chunda Saheb, ubi supra, p. 251.
76. For this part of the History of Deccan in detail, see Orme, i. 36–62; Cambridge’s War in India, p. 1–6; History and Management of the East India Company, p. 50–72; Memoire pour Dupleix, p. 35–43; Memoire contre Dupleix, p. 19–59; Revolution des Indes, i. 67–289. This last work was published anonymously in two volumes 12mo. in 1757. It is written with partiality to Dupleix; but the author is well informed, and a man of talents. The leading facts are shortly noticed by Wilks, ch. vii.
77. Seer Mutakhareen, iii. 115. Wilks says he was Governor of the strong fort of Adoni, ch. vii.
78. Memoire pour la Compagnie des Indes contre le Sieur Dupleix, p. 39.
79. Orme, i. 127; Memoire, ut supra, p. 40; Memoire pour le Sieur Dupleix, p. 45.
80. Memoire pour Dupleix, p. 47. The French Company assert, in their Memoir against Dupleix, (p. 44), that it was to gratify his vanity by this display, that the chiefs delayed the march to Trichinopoly: which seems the invention of malignity. Orme says, with better reasons, that to keep the army in obedience, it was necessary to obtain money, which they levied by contribution in the province.
81. Orme, i. 133–136; Mem. pour Dupleix, p. 51. The French Company accuse Dupleix again falsely of being the author of the ill-timed invasion of Tanjore: Mem. contre Dupleix, p. 45.
82. Seer Mutakhareen, iii. 115. Mr. Orme (i. 136) is mistaken when he says that Nazir Jung had marched toward Delhi, to oppose his elder brother: it was at a subsequent date that Ghazee ad dien marched for Deccan.
83. Orme, i. 136, 137.
84. Memoire pour Dupleix, p. 53.
85. Ibid. p. 54.
86. Rous’s Appendix, i. 8–22.
87. Orme, i. 130, 133, 138.
88. Cambridge’s War in India, p. 6–11; Orme, i. 138–142; History and Management of the East India Company, p. 73; Memoire pour Dupleix, p. 54; Memoire contre Dupleix, p. 47; Revolution des Indes, i. 232–238.
89. For the above details see Orme, i. 142–166. History and Management of the East India Company, p. 74–79; Cambridge’s War in India, p. 10–16; Seer Mutakhareen, iii. 116–118, the author of which says that Mirzapha Jung had a plot against the Patans, who on this occasion were not the aggressors; Memoire pour Dupleix, p. 55–68, who says he entered into the conspiracy against Nazir Jung, because he would not listen to peace; Memoire contre Dupleix, p. 47–61; Wilks, chap. vii. with whom Dupleix is a favourite.
90. Memoire contre Dupleix.
91. Laurence’s Narrative in Cambridge’s War in India, p. 28. “In the middle of July,” says Orme, i. 182, “the discontent which prevailed among the officers made it necessary to remove several of them at a time when there were very few fit to succeed to their posts.
92. Law, the commander of the French forces, whom I am much more inclined to believe than Dupleix, one of the most audacious contemners of truth that ever engaged in crooked politics, asserts his want of strength for any efficient operation; as Dupleix, who had entered into a correspondence with Mahomed Ali, and relied upon his promise to open to the French the gates of Trichinopoly, sent him not to attack Trichinopoly, but to receive possession of it; he adds, that when they were surprised by Mahomed Ali’s firing upon them from the walls, they had not a single piece of battering or heavy canon in the camp; that it was three months before they were supplied with any; that at first the whole army consisted of 11,860, but after the detachment sent for the recovery of Arcot, it consisted only of 6,680, of whom 600 only were Europeans. See Plainte du Chevalier Law contre le Sieur Dupleix, p. 21–23. Dupleix, on the other hand (Memoire, p. 74), speaking in round humbers, says that the natives, who had joined Chunda Saheb, raised the army to 30,000 men. So widely asunder are the statements of these two men, at the head of the departments, civil and military.
93. See a panegyrical life of him, for which his family furnished materials, in Kippis’s Biographia Britannica, vol. iii. art. Clive.
94. Dupleix accuses Law with great violence, for not intercepting this convoy, and the English writers have very readily joined with him. But if the facts asserted by Law are true, it was from want of means, not of capacity or inclination, that he failed. He says that the whole army, even after it was joined by the remains of the detachment sent to Arcot, and by the body under Aulum Khan, did not amount to 15,000, while the enemy were three times the number: That the cavalry of Chunda Saheb, who had long been without pay, refused to act; and were joined by several other corps of the native army: That from the importunate commands of Dupleix to blockade and starve Trichinopoly, he had extended his posts much beyond what the smallness of his means rendered advisable; and was weak at every point: That he made every effort to intercept the convoy at a distance; but the cavalry of Chunda Saheb refused to act; and Aulum Khan, after promising to support the detachment, failed, on the pretext that there was not a farthing to give him. See the details as stated by Law, Plainte, p. 23–28. The Company, in their reply to Dupleix, defend the conduct of Law. Mem. contre Dupleix, p. 74.
95. This movement has been violently condemned, and Dupleix ascribes to it the defeat of his schemes; but Major Laurence (Narrative, p. 31) says that “they (the English officers) reckoned it a prudent measure at the time.” From the weakness of the French a retreat was unavoidable. Law asserts that had they permitted the English to take possession of Seringham, they were taken in Caudine forks. He asserts also that they were already suffering for want of provisions; and that between abandoning Trichinopoly altogether, and the resolution which he adopted, there was no middle course. The wise course would have been, no doubt, to abandon Trichinopoly; and of this, Law says, he was abundantly aware. But this the reiterated and pressing commands of Dupleix absolutely forbad. I confess the defence of Law seems to me satisfactory. Plainte du Chev. Law, p. 29–31. Orme says that the enemy burned a great store of provisions, when they passed over into Seringham; but what Law says is much more probable, that the army was already beginning to be in want.
96. This is directly affirmed by the French East India Company (Memoire contre Dupleix, p. 70), and evidenced by extracts which they produce from the letters to Dupleix written by his own agent, at the court of the Subahdar. Mr. Orme says (i. 252) that the patent of Nabob was actually procured before Chunda Saheb’s death. The truth is, that each of them, Chunda Saheb, and himself, wished to get rid of the other, and to be Nabob alone; and they were endeavouring, by mutual treachery, to disappoint each other’s designs. Mem. ut supra, and its Appendix No. vi. For the above details, from the death of Mirzapha Jung, see Orme, i. 186–242; History and Management of the East India Company, p. 80–82; Cambridge’s War in India, 16–37; Memoire pour Dupleix, p. 71–77; Memoire contre Dupleix, p. 70–74; Plainte du Chevalier Law, p. 19–35. Law says, p. 33, that they made some attempts for the escape of Chunda Saheb, by water; but the river was too shallow at the time to float the boat.
97. Laurence’s Narrative, p. 38.
98. Colonel Wilks is very severe on the treachery of the Nabob, and on the English for abetting it. Historical Sketches, ut supra, p. 285–291.
99. Laurence’s Narrative, p. 42.
100. Laurence’s Narrative, p. 52.
101. In his letter to the French minister, dated 16th October, 1753, he says the recruits whom the Company sent him were, enfans, décroteurs, et bandits. He says, “L’examplé que vous a présenté l’Angleterre en n’envoyant que des troupes aguerries auroit du engager la Compagnie à avoir la mème attention dans le choix.” He adds, “Je ne sais que penser de celui qui est chargé des recrues, mais je crois qu’il n’y employe pas la somme que la Compagnic lui passe pour chaque homme: c’est n’est sans doute pas votre intention m la sienne, mais il n’en est pas moins vrai que tout se qui nous parvient n’est qu’un ramassis de la plus vile cauaille.—Permettez moi, monseigneur, de vous supplier de donner à ce sujet les ordres les plus precis; la gloire du roi y est interessée, ce motif vous paroîtra plus que suffisant pour exiger toute votre attention. Je n’ose voùs dire tous les mauvais propos qui se tiennent sur l’envois de ces malheureuses troupes; l’Anglois en fait de gorges chaudes, il n’a eu que trop d’occasions de les mepriser; les Maures et les Indiens commencent à perdre la haute idée qu’ils avoient conçue de nous, et nos officiers ne se mettent que malgré eux à leur tête; ce n’est qu’un cri à ce sujet.” Memoire pour Dupleix, Pieces Justific. Lett. de M. Dupleix, à M. de Machault, p. 50. In the same letter he says, “Pour les officiers il y en a peu, ou pour mieux dire point du tout qui soient en etat de commander; la bravoure ne leur manque point, mais les talens n’y repondent pas: dans le nombre sur-tout de ceux arrivés l’année derniere, la plupart n’etoient que des enfans, sans la moindre teinture du service; le soldat s’en moque, et souvent avec juste raison.” Ibid. p. 51. Speaking in the same letter of the services of Bussy, along with Salabut Jung, he says, “Si j’en avois un second ici, je vous proteste, monseigneur, que toutes les affaires de cette partie seroient terminées, il y a plus de deux ans.” Ibid. p. 57. Nor was this an empty boast: So near was he to the accomplishment of his object, without any such important assistance, that the talents of a man like Bussy, in the Carnatic, would soon have placed him at its head.
102. This fact is stated on the satisfactory authority of Col. Wilks, who had an opportunity of perusing the correspondence of Laurence with the Presidency. Historical Sketches, ut supra, p. 342.
103. For this war, Laurence’s Narrative, in Cambridge’s War, p. 38–95; Orme, i. 245–249, 253–322, 337–365; Mem. pour Dupleix, p. 78–111; Wilks, ut supra, p. 285–340, yield the most important materials.
104. Orme, i. 337; Laurence’s Narrative, p. 81; Mem. pour Dupleix, p. 83; Wilks, p. 338. The English writers, with the exception of Wilks, make no allusion to any pretence of a patent held out by the English. But it is so distinctly asserted by Dupleix, who appeals to the letters of Saunders, to which his opponents had access, that I doubt not the fact. The English writers, who are very severe upon the French forgeries, say, that the conferences were broken off when the French, who had permitted their papers to be so far copied by the English, withdrew them upon the English allegations that they were forged. Dupleix on the other hand says, that he refused to permit the French papers any longer to be copied, when the English failed to produce any on their side which might undergo the same operation.
105. Mem. pour Dupleix, p. 89. As this assertion (made before persons highly competent to contradict it, and for which an appeal is made to the Journal of Duvelaer) is not denied in the Answer of the Company to the Memoire of Dupleix, it is entitled to credit.
106. Col. Wilks (p. 345) must have read the treaty very carelessly, to imagine that “the substantial Moorish government and dignity of the extensive and valuable provinces of the Northern Circars were not noticed in the treaty,” when the very first article of the treaty says, “The two Companies, English and French, shall renounce for ever all Moorish government and dignity, and shall never interfere in any differences that arise between the princes of the country.” Mr. Orme too (so easily is the judgment warped of the best of men when their passions are engaged) imagined it would have been no infringement of the treaty, to assist the Mahrattas with English troops from Bombay, for the purpose of compelling Salabut Jung to dismiss Bussy and the French, and deprive them of the Northern Circars. Orme, i. 406.
107. This is the number stated by Laurence, Narrative, p. 95; Orme, i. 371, calls it 1,200; Godheu, in his letter to Dupleix, received two days before his landing, calls it 2,000 (Mem. pour Dupleix, p. 101). And Dupleix himself asserts (Ibid. p. 111), that by the troops newly arrived his force was rendered superior to that of the English.
108. Memoir pour Dupleix, p. 111.
109. Orme, i. 249.
110. The author of the Seer Mutakhareen, whom as better informed I follow in all affairs relating at this period to the court of Delhi, says, (iii. 19) that he died suddenly, without any mention of poison. The story of the poison is, indeed, presented in a note by the translator; who does not however impute the fact to the mother of Ghazee ad dien, but to the ladies of his harem in general.
111. The oriental historian describes the efficacy of the French operations in battle in such expressions as these: “At which time the French, with their quick musketry and their expeditions artillery, drew smoke from the Mahratta breasts:” “they lost a vast number of men, whom the French consumed in shoals at the fire-altars of their artillery.” Seer Mutakhareen, ii. 118.
112. Orme, i. 334.
113. Wilks, ut supra, p. 338.
114. Orme, i. 377. Voltaire says, (Precis du Siecle de Louis XV. ch. xxxix.) Dupleix fut reduit à disputer à Paris les tristes restes de sa fortune contre la Compagnie des Indes, et à solliciter des audiences dans I’antichambre de ses juges. Il en mourut bientôt de chagrin.
115. Orme, i. 380–387; Cambridge’s War in India, p. 109–113.
116. Orme, i. 388, 398, 419; Cambridge, p. 111, 117, 119.
117. Orme, i. 399, 420; Cambridge, p. 188.
118. Orme, i. 429–436, and ii. 89–104; Wilks, p. 380–388. It is amusing to compare the account of Bussy’s transactions on this trying occasion, in the pages of Owen Cambridge (War in India, p. 132–135,) written under halt information, and fulness of national prejudice, with the well informed and liberal narratives of Orme and of Wilks.
119. Seer Mutakhareen, i. 17, 43, 296.
120. Holwell (Interesting Historical Events, i. 70) represents his conduct as highly cruel and unjust, and gives an account of five baskets of human heads, which he saw conveying to him in a boat.
121. Seer Mutakhareen, i. 298—382; Orme, ii. 26—32.
122. Holwell, who was in the province, and must have had opportunities of learning many of the particulars, gives (Interesting Historical Events, i. 118) a detailed account of this retreat, which he celebrates as one of the most brilliant exploits in the annals of warfare.
123. Seer Mutakhareen, i. 407—438; Orme, ii. 35. Both Orme and the author of the Seer Mutakhareen mention the instigation of Nizam al Mulk, but after all it seems to have been only a vague conjecture; and there were motives enough to Ragogee Bonsla without prompting. Holwell (Interesting Historical Events, i. 108) says they were instigated by the Court of Delhi.
124. The author of the Seer Mutakhareen, who had the best opportunities of knowing, says, (i. 450,) that the Emperor claimed, as due on account of the payment of the chout, the assistance, for the province of Bengal, of the government of Satarah, against Ragogee Bonsla; and that it was in compliance with this request, that the army of Balagee Row came into Bengal. Holwell, i. 140, and Orme, ii. 37, say, that the two armies came in concert, and only differed about the division of the plunder.
125. For a minute and very interesting account of the government of Aliverdi, see Seer Mutakhareen, i. 355—681. The narrative of Orme, (ii. 28—52,) and that of Holwell (Interesting Historical Events, i. 85—176), do not exactly agree either with Gholam or with one another. Scrafton’s account (Reflections, &c.) Holwell says was stolen from him.
126. Orme, ii. 34, says that Aliverdi had only one daughter. The author of the Seer Mutakhareen, who was his near relation, says he had three, i. 304.
127. Orme, ii. 47, says that Aliverdi had declared Suraja Dowla his successor, before the death of his uncle. But the author of the Seer Mutakhareen, who was in the confidential service of Seid Hamet, the surviving nephew, tells us that he regarded himself as the successor of Aliverdi till the time of his death; which was during the last illness of Aliverdi.
128. Evidence of John Cooke, Esq. (who at that time was Secretary to the Governor and Council of Calcutta), in the First Report of the Committee of the House of Commons, appointed “to inquire into the Nature, State, and Condition of the East India Company,” in 1772.
129. Report, ut supra. Mr. Cooke, from notes, written immediately after the transactions, gives a very interesting narrative, from the death of Aliverdi, till the morning after the night of the Black Hole.
130. Orme, ii. 78.
131. The atrocities of English imprisonment at home, not then exposed to detestation by the labours of Howard, too naturally reconciled Englishmen abroad to the use of dungeons; of Black Holes. What had they to do with a black hole? Had no black hole existed, (as none ought to exist any where, least of all in the sultry and unwholesome climate of Bengal,) those who perished in the Black Hole of Calcutta would have experienced a different fate. Even so late as 1782, the common gaol of Calcutta is described by the Select Committee, “a miserable and pestilential place.” That Committee examined two witnesses on the state of the common gaol of Calcutta. One said, “The gaol is an old ruin of a house; there were very few windows to admit air, and those very small. He asked the gaoler how many souls were then confined in the prison? Who answered, upwards of 170, blacks and whites included—that there was no gaol allowance, that many persons had died for want of the necessaries of life. The nauseous smells, arising from such a crowded place, were beyond expression. Besides the prisoners, the number of women and attendants, to carry in provisions and dress victuals, was so great, that it was astomshing that any person could long survive such a situation. It was the most horrible place he ever saw, take it altogether.” The other witness said, “It is divided into small apartments, and those very bad; the stench dreadful, and more offensive than he ever experienced in this country—that there is no thorough draft of air—the windows are neither large nor numerous—the rooms low—that it would be impossible for any European to exist any length of time in the prison—that debtors and criminals were not separated—nor Hindoos, Mahomedans, and Europeans.” First Report, Appendix, No. xi.
132. The account of the capture of Calcutta has been taken from the Report above quoted; from the accounts of Mr. Holwell and Mr. Watts; from Scrafton, p. 52—62; Orme, ii. 49—80; and Seer Mutakhareen, i. 716—721. The translator of this last work, says in a note, “There is not a word here of those English shut up in the Black Hole, to the number of 131, where they were mostly smothered. The truth is, that the Hindoostanes wanting only to secure them for the night, as they were to be presented the next morning to the prince, shut them up in what they heard was the prison of the fort, without having any idea of the capacity of the room; and indeed the English themselves had none of it. This much is certain, that this event, which cuts so capital a figure in Mr. Watt’s performance, is not known in Bengal; and even in Calcutta it is unknown to every man out of the 400,000 that inhabit that city: at least it is difficult to meet a single native that knows any thing of it: so careless and so incurious are those people. Were we therefore to accuse the Indians of cruelty, for such a thoughtless action, we would of course accuse the English, who, intending to embark 400 Gentoo Sepoys, destined for Madras, put them in boats, without one single necessary, and at last left them to be overset by the bore, when they all perished after a three days’ fast.”
133. Orme, i. 406. “Colonel Scott,” says Clive himself, in his evidence before the Committee, (See Report, ut supra) “had been strongly recommended by the Duke of Cumberland.”
134. See for this account, Orme, i. 406—417; Cambridge’s War in India, p. 120—130; Lord Clive’s Evidence, Report, ut supra.
135. Scrafton, p. 62, sinks the culpable circumstances.
136. The Indian historian gives an amusing account of the relations between England and France: “Just at this crisis,” says he, “the flames of war broke out between the French and English; two nations who had disputes between themselves of five or six hundred years standing; and who, after proceeding to bloodshed, wars, battles, and massacres, for a number of years, would lay down their arms by common agreement, and take breath on both sides, in order to come to blows again, and to fight with as much fury as ever.” Seer Mutakhareen, i. 759.
137. Report ut supra, Appendix, No. vi.
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138. Orme, ii. 139. Clive himself gives a curious account of the deliberation upon this measure: “That the members of the Committee were Mr. Drake (the Governor), himself (Col. Clive), Major Kilpatrick, and Mr. Becher:—Mr. Becher gave his opinion for a neutrality, Major Kilpatrick, for a neutrality;—he himself gave his opinion for the attack of the place; Mr. Drake gave an opinion that nobody could make any thing of. Major Kilpatrick then asked him, whether he thought the forces and squadron could attack Chandernagor and the Nabob’s army at the same time?—he said, he thought they could; upon which Major Kilpatrick desired to withdraw his opinion, and to be of his. They voted Mr. Drake’s no opinion at all; and Major Kilpatrick and he being the majority, a letter was written to Admiral Watson, desiring him to co-operate in the attack on Chandernagor.” Report, ut supra. There is something ludicrous in voting a man’s opinion to be no opinion; yet the undecisive, hesitating, ambiguous propositions, of men who know not what resolution to take, cannot, in general, perhaps, be treated by a better rule.
139. Report, ut supra, Appendix, No. vi.
140. Seer Mutakhareen, i. 762.
141. Captain Brereton, who was Lieutenant with Admiral Watson, declared in evidence, “that he had heard Admiral Watson say, he thought it an extraordinary measure to depose a man they had so lately made a solemn treaty with.” Report, ut supra.
142. Report, ut supra.
143. It has been done with exemplary minuteness and patience by Mr. Orme, ii. 149—175.
144. Orme, ii. 153.
145. Evidence before the Committee, Report, ut supra.
146. Ibid. These latter receipts were the occasion of a dispute. “Upon this being known,” said Clive, (Report ut supra) “Mr. Watson replied, that he was entitled to a share in that money. He (Clive) agreed in opinion with the gentlemen, when this application was made, that Mr. Watson was not one of the Committee, but at the same time did justice to his services and proposed to the gentlemen to contribute as much as would make his share equal to the Governor’s and his own; that about three or four consented to it, the rest would not.”
147. Evidence, ut supra.
148. Orme, ii. 171.
149. Evidence, Report, ut supra.
150. Scrafton (Reflections, p. 90,) says, that the Colonel’s resolution was founded upon a letter he received from Jaffier in the course of the day. Orme, who loves a little of the marvellous, says, “that as soon as the council of war broke up he retired alone into the adjoining grove, where he continued near an hour in deep meditation; and gave orders, on his return to his quarters, that the army should cross the river the next morning.” ii. 170.
151. Lord Clive stated (Report, ut supra,) “that the battle’s being attended with so little bloodshed arose from two causes; first, the army was sheltered by so high a bank that the heavy artillery of the enemy could not possibly do them much mischief; the other was, that Suraja Dowla had not confidence in his army, nor his army any confidence in him, and therefore they did not do their duty upon that occasion.”
152. Orme, ii. 185.
153. Ibid. ii. 180.
154. A piece of consummate treachery was practised upon an individual. Among the Hindu merchants established at Calcutta was Omichund, “a man,” says Mr. Orme, “of great sagacity and understanding,” who had traded to a vast amount, and acquired an enormous fortune. “The extent of his habitation,” continues Mr. Orme, “divided into various departments, the number of his servants continually employed in various occupations, and a retinue of armed men in constant pay, resembled more the state of a prince than the condition of a merchant. His commerce extended to all parts of Bengal and Bahar, and by presents and services he had acquired so much influence with the principal officers of the Bengal government, that the Presidency, in times of difficulty, used to employ his mediation with the Nabob. This pre-eminence, however, did not fail to render him the object of much envy.” (Orme, ii. 50.) When the alarm, excited by the hostile designs of Suraja Dowla, threw into consternation the minds of Mr. Drake and his council, among other weak ideas which occurred to them, one was, to secure the person of Ounchund, lest, peradventure, he should be in concert with their enemies. He was seized and thrown into confinement. His guards, beheving that violence, that is, dishonour, would next fall upon his house, set fire to it, after the manner of Hindus, and slaughtered the inmates of his harem. Notwithstanding this, when Mr. Holwell endeavoured to parley with the Nabob, he employed Omichund to write letters to his friends, importuning them to intercede, in that extremity, with the prince. At the capture, though his person was liberated, his valuable effects and merchandize were plundered. No less than 400,000 rupees in cash were found in his treasury. When an order was published that such of the English as had escaped the black hole might return to their homes, they were supplied with provisions by Omichund, “whose intercession,” says Orme, “had probably procured their return.” Omichund, upon the ruin of Calcutta, followed the Nabob’s army, and soon acquired a high degree of confidence both with the Nabob’s favourite, and with himself. After the recovery of Calcutta, when the Nabob, alarmed at the attack of his camp, entered into negotiation, and concluded a treaty, Omichund was one of the principal agents employed. And when Mr. Watts was sent to Moorshedabad as agent at the durbar (court) of Suraja Dowla, “he was accompanied,” says Mr. Orme, (ii. 137,) “by Omichund, whose conduct in the late negotiation had effaced the impression of former imputations, insomuch that Mr. Watts was permitted to consult and employ him without reserve on all occasions.” He was employed as a main instrument in all the intrigues with Jaffier. It was never surmised that he did not second with all his efforts, the projects of the English; it was never denied that his services were of the utmost importance. Mr. Orme says expressly (p. 182) that “his tales and artifices prevented Suraja Dowla from believing the representations of his most trusty servants, who early suspected, and at length were convinced, that the English were confederated with Jaffier.” When the terms of compensation for the losses sustained by the capture of Calcutta were negotiated between Mr. Watts and Meer Jaffier, 3,000,000 of rupees were set down for Omichund, which, considering the extent of his property, and that “most of the best houses in Calcutta were his,” (Orme, ii. 128,) was probably not more than his loss. Looking forward to the rewards which he doubted not that Jaffier, if successful, would bestow upon those of the English who were the chief instruments of his exaltation; estimating also the importance of his own services, and the risk, both of life and of fortune, which, in rendering those services, he had incurred, Omichund conceived that he too might put in his claim for reward; and, according to the example of his countrymen, resolved not to injure himself by the modesty of his demand. He asked a commission of five per cent., on the money which should be received from the Nabob’s treasury, and a fourth part of the jewels; but agreed upon hearing the objections of Mr. Watts, to refer his claims to the committee. When the accounts were sent to Calcutta, the sum to be given to Omichund, even as compensation for his losses, seemed a very heavy grievance to men who panted for more to themselves. To men whose minds were in such a state, the great demands of Omichund appeared (the reader will laugh—but they did literally appear) a crime. They were voted a crime; and so great a crime, as to deserve to be punished—to be punished, not only by depriving him of all reward, but depriving him of his compensation, that compensation which was stipulated for to every body: It was voted that Omichund should have nothing. They were in his power, however, therefore he was not to be irritated. It was necessary he should be deceived. Clive, whom deception, when it suited his purpose, never cost a pang, proposed, that two treaties with Meer Jaffier should be drawn up, and signed: One, in which satisfaction to Omichund should be provided for, which Omichund should see; another, that which should really be executed, in which he should not be named. To his honour be it spoken, Admiral Watson refused to be a party in this treachery. He would not sign the false treaty; and the committee forged his name. When Omichund, upon the final adjustment, was told that he was cheated, and found that he was a ruined man, he fainted away, and lost his reason. He was from that moment insane. Not an Englishman, not even Mr. Orme, has yet expressed a word of sympathy or regret.
155. The chief authorities which have been followed for this series of transactions in Bengal, have been the Seer Mutakhareen, i. 298—772; the First Report from the Committee on the Nature, State, and Condition of the East India Company, in 1772, which is full of curious information; Orme’s War in India, ii. 28—196; and the tracts published by the various actors in the scene, Scrafton, Watts, &c.
156. Cambridge, p. 140.
157. Orme, ii. 197–217; Cambridge’s War in India, p. 137—153; Wilks’ Historical Sketches of the South of India, p. 392, 393.
158. He himself complains that little preparation was made to co-operate with him. Among the proofs of carelessness, one was that he was saluted with five discharges of cannon, loaded with ball, of which three pierced the ship through and through, and the two others damaged the rigging; Memoire pour Lally, i. 39.
159. Lally complains, and with good reason, of the deplorable ignorance of the French Governor and Council. They could not tell him the amount of the English forces on the coast; nor whether Cuddalore was surrounded with a dry wall or a rampart; nor whether there was any river to pass between Pondicherry and Fort St. David. He complains that he lost forty-eight hours at Cuddalore, because there was not a man at Pondicherry, who could tell him that it was open on the side next the sea; that he was unable to find twenty-four hours’ provisions at Pondicherry; and that the Governor, who promised to forward a portion to him upon the road, broke his word; whence the troops were two days without food, and some of them died. Ibid. 40, 41.
160. A French ship was driven on shore, and obliged to be abandoned; but this was owing to an accident after the battle.
161. Lord Clive himself said, in his evidence before the Committee, in 1772: “Mr. Lally arrived with such a force as threatened not only the destruction of all the settlements there, but of all the East India Company’s possessions, and nothing saved Madras from sharing the fate of Fort St. David, at that time, but their want of money, which gave time for strengthening and reinforcing the place.” Report, ut supra.
162. Orme (ii. 104) says he left 100 Europeans and 1,000 Sepoys. Wilks (Histor. Sketches, p. 387) says he left 200 Europeans and 600 Sepoys. Orme again (Ibid. p. 264) speaks of the detachment as consisting of 200 Europeans and 500 Sepoys.
163. Mr. Orme states the days on report merely; but we may presume it was the best information which that careful historian could procure.
164. This, at least, is stated by the English historians, and by the numerous and too successful enemies of Lally. In the original correspondence, there is no proof that I can perceive. In one of Lally’s letters (to De Leyrit, 18th of May) he presses him to prevail upon the inhabitants of Pondicherry, by extra rewards, to lend their assistance. This looks not like a general order to impress the inhabitants. The truth is, that he himself brings charges, which were too well founded, of oppression committed by others against the natives. In his letter to De Leyrit, 25th of May, 1758, he says, “J’apprend que daus votre civil et dans votre militaire, il se commet des vexations vis-a-vis des gens du pays qui les éloignent et les empêchent de vous faire les fournitures necessaires à la subsistance de l’armée.” Lally says in his Memoire, p. 50, “Des employés du Sieur Desvaux, protégé par le Sieur de Leyrit, arrêtoient des provisions qui arrivoient au camp, et exigeoient de l’argent des noirs, pour leur accorder la liberté du passage. Un de ces brigauds avoit été pris en flagrant delit. On avoit saisi sur lui un sac plein d’especes et de petits joyaux enlevés aux paysans.”
165. Mem. pour Lally, p. 21. In their letter of the 20th March, 1759, they say; “Vous voudrez bien prendre en consideration l’administration des affaires de la Compagnie, et l’origine des abus sans nombre que nous y voyons: Un despotisme absolu nous paroit la premiere chose a corriger.”—They add, “Nous trouvons par-tout des preuves de la prodigalité la plus outrée, et du plus grand desordre.”
166. There is no doubt at all, that the neglect of all preparation, to enable him to act with promptitude, though they had been expecting him at Pondicherry for eight months, was extreme, and to the last degree culpable. There was a total want of talent at this time at Pondicherry; a weak imagination that the expected armament was to do every thing, and that those who were there before had no occasion to do any thing; otherwise, with the great superiority of force they had enjoyed since the arrival of the 1,000 Europeans, in the beginning of September, they might have performed actions of no trifling importance, and have at least prepared some of the money and other things requisite for the operations of Lally.
167. Orme. Lally (Mem. p. 42) says, “Il y avoit dans le Fort de Saint David sept cent Européens, et environ deux mille Cipayes. Les troupes du Comte de Lally consistoient en seize cents Européens, et six cents noirs, tant cavalerie qu’infanterie, ramassés à la hâte. Son regiment, qui avoit essayé un combat de mer, ou il avoit perdu quatre-vingt-quatre hommes, et à qui on n’avoit donné depuis son débarquement à Pondicherry, que quarante-huit heures de repos, etoit à peine en etat de lui fournir deux piquets.” It is at least to be remembered, that this statement of facts was made in the face of Lally’s numerous and bitter enemies.
168. Memoire, ut supra, Piéces Justificatives, p. 30. De Leyrit defended himself by asserting the want of means; “Je vous rendrai compte,” says he, “de ma conduite, et de la disette de fonds dans laquelle on m’a laissé depuis deux ans, et je compte vous faire voir que j’ai fait à tous égards plus qu’on ne devoit attendre de moi. Mes ressources sont aujourdui epuisés, et nous n’en avons plus à attendre que d’un succès. Ou en trouverois-je de suffisantes dans un pays ruiné par quinze ans de guerre, pour fournir aux depenses considerables de votre armée et aux besoins d’une escadre, par laquelle nous attendions bien des especes de secours, et qui se trouve au contraire denuée de tout?” Ib. No. 20. Lett. du Sieur De Leyrit au Comte de Lally, 24th May, 1758. Lally, however, asserts that he had received two millions of livres by the arrival of the fleet. Mem. p. 49.
169. This at least is the account of the English historians. Lally himself says, that it was his own design to proceed directly from Fort St. David to Madras; but the commander of the fleet absolutely refused to co-operate with him; would go upon a cruize to the south, for the purpose of intercepting such vessels as might arrive from England; and carried with him the detachment which Lally had put on board to prevail upon him to trust himself again at sea alter the hist engagement. Mem. p. 57.
170. Lally repeats with what regret he postponed the siege of Madras; and shows that it was by earnest persuasions of the Governor, and the Jesuit Lavaur (a missionary of a most intriguing spirit, who had contrived to gain a vast influence in the Councils of Pondicherry), that he undertook the expedition to Tanjore. Mem. p. 62.
171. Lally was, of course, obliged to trust to the information of those acquainted with the country; and the letters of Lavaur and De Leyrit make it sufficiently appear that they extenuated beyond measure the difficulties of the undertaking; and made him set out upon representations which they knew to be false, and promises which were never intended to be fulfilled. In fact it would have required a cooler, and a more fertile head than that of Lally, to counteract the malignity, to stimulate the indifference, and to supply the enormous deficiencies, by which he was surrounded.
172. This is the statement of Orme (ii. 27). That of Lally is—qu’il ne restoit au parc d’artillerie que trois milliers de poudre pour les canons, et vingt coups par soldat en cartouche—he adds, that he had no other balls for the cannon but those which were shot by the enemy, of which few corresponded with the calibre of his guns; that twenty-four hours’ battering were still requisite to make the breach practicable; that he had but a few days’ provisions for the European part of his army, while the native part and the attendants were entirely without provisions, and had, the greater part of them, deserted. Mem. ut supra, p. 73.
173. Lally says, that he had at the same time received a letter from the Commanding Officer at Pondicherry, announcing that a body of 1,200 English, who had marched from Madras, were menacing Pondicherry; and one from Gopal Row the Mahratta, threatening with a visit the territory of the French, if their army did not immediately evacuate Tanjore. Mem. p. 73.
174. Notwithstanding their hardships and fatigues Lally asserts that they lost but little. Ib p. 81.
175. These events are minutely recorded by Orme, ii. 197–352. The sketches and criticisms of Col. Wilks, p. 379–398, are professional and sensible. Cambridge, p. 135–185, goes over the same ground. A spirited abstract is given, p. 96–102, by the author of the History and Management of the East India Company. For the operations of Lally, his own Memoir, with the original documents in the appendix, is in the highest degree instructive and entertaining.
176. Mem. pour le Cornte de Lally, p. 86–99; Orme, ii. 341–370.
177. Lally himself informs us, that these letters uniformly began with such expressions as these, “Renvoyez moi M. de Bussy avec un corps de troupes; vous savez que je ne peux pas m’en passer;” or, “vous savez que je ne peux pas me passer de M. de Bussy; renvoyez le moi avec un corps de troupes,” &c. Mem. pour le Comte de Lally, p. 93.
178. Letter to De Leyrit, 28th June, 1758. Mem. ut supra, Appen. No. xxxvi.
179. Mem. ut supra, i. 98, 100.
180. Orme, ii. 383–459; Mem. pour Lally, p. 99–117. Of the sick and wounded, those who were too ill to be removed, to the number of thirty-three, according to Lally’s own account, to that of forty-four according to Mr. Orme’s, were left behind, and recommended by a letter of Lally to the English commander. They were treated, as Lally himself declares, with all the care which the laws, both of war and of humanity, prescribed.
181. Mem. pour Lally, p. 135.
182. In the account of Bussy’s march, I have followed his own and Orme’s account. Lally (Mem. p. 136) complains of his delays, and insinuates that to the misconduct through which these delays took place, the loss of Bassalut Jung’s alliance ought to be ascribed.
183. Mem. pour Lally, p. 161;—Orme, ii. 577, says that cannon for the battery, which did not open till the 20th, six days after Lally took possession of the Pettah or town adjoining the fort, were brought from Valdore on carriages sent from Pondicherry.
184. Orme, ii. 582. Lally (Mem. p. 161) gives a very different account of the respective numbers: that the French had 900 infantry, 150 cavalry, 300 marines and sailors, in all 1,350 Europeans, with 1,800 Sepoys; and that the English had 2,500 infantry and 100 cayalry, all Europeans; of black troops nearly an equal number with the French.—There is some appearance that Mr. Orme’s account of the French force is conjectural, and hence exaggerated, as all his numbers are round numbers, one regiment 400, another 700, another 400, cavalry 300, &c. Perhaps we ought to trust to Lally’s account of his own forces, because it was given in the face of his enemies, who were interested, and well able, to contradict it if untrue; and we need not hesitate to take Mr. Orme’s account of the English, where his knowledge was complete.
185. Mr. Orme, ii. 583, says, that two field-pieces, which fired several times in one minute, and brought down then or fifteen men or horses, caused the flight.
186. Lally says (Tableau Histor. de l’Expedition de l’Inde, p. 32), and apparently with justice, “Il n’est pas douteux que si l’ennemie se fῦt porté tout de suite [after the battle of Wandewash] sur Pondichéry, il s’en fῦt rendu maitre en huit jours. Il n’y avoit pas un grain de ris dans la place; les lettres, prieres, ordres, et menaces que le Compte De Lally employoit depuis deux ans vis-a-vis du Sieur de Leyrit, n’avoient pu le determiner à y former un seul magazin.” The English leaders appear to have had no conception of the extremely reduced state of the French, and how safe it would have been to strike a decisive blow at the seat of the colony.
187. For these events see Mem, pour le Comte de Lally; Mem. pour le Sieur De Leyrit; Mem: pour Bussy; Orme, vol. ii.; Cambridge; Wilks; Voltaire, Fragmens Hist. sur l’Inde, et sur la Mort du Comte de Lally.
188. Clive’s Letter to the Proprietors of E. I. Stock, in 1764, p. 30.
189. Orme, ii. 53.
190. Seer Mutakhareen, ii. 8.
191. Orme, ii. 272. Clive, however, (Report, ut supra); and the author of the Seer Mutakhareen (ii. 8), both say that the murdered prince was a brother of Suraja Dowla.
192. Orme calls him Jaffier’s relation; but the author of the Seer Mutakhareen (ii. 9), who had better opportunities of knowing, says he was only the son, by a concubine, of a man who had married Jaffier’s sister.
193. Mr. Scrafton (Reflections on the Government, &c. of Indostan, p. 115) says, “At this crisis, when military virtue and unanimity were more immediately necessary, the Directors, divided by violent contests among themselves, which certainly did them no honour, were so unfortunate in their judgment, as to appoint four Governors of Bengal, to govern each four months, and left Colonel Clive entirely out of this list. The absurdity of such a system was too apparent to take place,” &c.
194. Report, ut supra. The influence of the Colonel is depicted by the following anecdote. There was an officer of rank, to whom Jaffier had been often indebted before his elevation, remarkable for his wit. This, from their former intimacy, and a jealousy of present neglect, he did not spare on the Nabob himself. While the armies of the Nabob and of Clive were at Patna, he was one day accused to the Nabob of having permitted a fray between some of his own soldiers and some of Clive’s. “It chanced,” says the author of the Seer Mutakhareen, ii. 19, “that Mirza Shemseddin himself made his appearance at that very moment: it was in full durbar and in the hall of audience. The Nawab fixed his eyes upon him, and spoke a few words that seemed to border upon reprimand: ’Sir;’ said he, ’your people have had a fray with the Colonel’s people: Is your honour to learn who is that Colonel Clive, and in what station heaven has seated him?’ ’My Lord Nawab,’ answered the Mirza, getting up instantly, and standing bolt-upright before him: ’Me, to quarrel with the Colonel! me! who never get up in the morning, without making three profound bows to his very jack ass! How then could I be daring enough, after that, to fall out with the rider himself!’”
195. Orme, ii. 356.
196. Orme says, (ii. 363,) “Clive did not entertain a surmise that it would be taken whilst it had provisions.” But Clive himself says, (Report, ut supra,) Nothing saved Madras from sharing the fate of Fort St. David, but their [the French] want of money, which gave time for strengthening and reinforcing the place.”
197. Orme only says, (ii. 364,) “The measure was too vigorous to be acceptable to all the members of the council.” But Clive himself says (Report, ut supra), that he undertook it, “contrary to the inclinations of his whole council.”
198. Orme, ii. 269–287, and 352–363; Seer Mutakhareen, ii. 4–24.
199. Orme, ii. 375–380, 472–491, 554; Wilks, p. 401.
200. The Prince, Holwell assures us, (Memorial, p. 2) repeatedly offered to grant the English their own terms, if they would assist him in recovering his rights. On what side justice lay, is evident enough. On what side policy, whether on that which Clive rejected, or that which he chose, is a more subtle inquiry.
201. Scott’s History of Bengal, p. 379–391; Seer Mutakhareen, vol. ii. part ii. p. 42–89; Francklin’s Shah Auluin, p. 8–11; First Report of the Select Committee in 1772; Holwell’s Memorial, p. 2.
202. First Report from the Select Committee in 1772; Holwell’s Memorial; Calliaud’s Narrative. The author of the Seer Mutakhareen wonders greatly what could be the reason of Clive’s quitting the government; a sentiment very natural to him, who well understood the pleasure of governing; but could not so easily conceive the passion of an Englishman to see lodged a princely fortune in his own country.
203. It is stated at 60,000 men by Calliaud (Narrative of what happened in Bengal in 1760, p. 7); but this we conceive is an exaggerated conjecture.
204. The remarks of the Mogul nobleman, who was in Patna at the moment of the action, are amusing at least. “What remained of their people,” he says, “was rallied by Doctor William Fullerton, a friend of mine, and possibly by some English officers whose names I know not, who ranged them in order again; and as one of their guns was to be left on the field of battle, they found means to render it useless and of no avail, by thrusting a large needle of iron into its eye. The other being in good condition, they took it with them, together with its ammunition; and that handful of men had the courage to retire in the face of a victorious enemy without once shrinking from their ranks. During their journey, the cart of ammunition chanced to receive some damage; the Doctor stopped unconcernedly, and after having put it in order, he bravely pursued his route again; and it must be acknowledged, that this nation’s presence of mind, firmness of temper, and undaunted bravery, are past all question. They join the most resolute courage to the most cautions prudence; nor have they their equals in the art of ranging themselves in battle array, and fighting in order. If to so many military qualifications they knew how to join the arts of government; if they showed a concern for the circumstances of the husbandman and the gentleman, and exerted as much ingenuity and solicitude in relieving and easing the people of God, as they do in whatever concerns their military affairs, no nation in the world would be preferable to them, or prove worthier of command. But such is the little regard which they show to the people of these kingdoms, and such their apathy and indifference for their welfare, that the people under their dominion groan every where, and are reduced to poverty and distress. Oh God! come to the assistance of thine afflicted servants, and deliver them from the oppressions they suffer.” Seer Mutakhareen, ii. 101.
205. The author of the Seer Mutakhareen, who had a distant view of the battle from the walls of Patna, describes, with much effect, the alternation of hopes and fears which agitated the inhabitants, as the various reports of the battle reached the city, or the tokens which came to their eyes and their ears were variously interpreted. At last, he says, “when the day was far spent, a note came to Mr. Amyatt from Captain Knox, which mentioned that the enemy was defeated and flying. This intelligence was sent to all the principal men of the city, and caused a deal of joy. I went to the factory to compliment the gentlemen, when in the dusk of the evening Captain Knox himself crossed over, and came with Shitabroy in his company. They were both covered with dust and sweat. The Captain then gave some detail of the battle, and paid the greatest encomiums on Shitabroy’s zeal, activity, and valour. He exclaimed several times, ’This is a real Nawab; I never saw such a Nawab in my life.’ A few moments after, Ramnarain was introduced. He had in his company both Mustapha Coollee Khan, and the Cutwal of the city, with some other men of consequence, who, on hearing of the arrival of these two men, had flocked to the factory; and on seeing them alone could not help believing that they had escaped from the slaughter; so far were they from conceiving that a few hundreds of men could defeat a whole army. Nor could they be made to believe (impressed as they were with Hindian notions) that a commander could quit his army so unconcernedly, unless he had indeed run away from it; nor would listen to what Mr. Amyatt repeatedly said to convince Ramnarain and others of their mistake.” Seer Mutakhareen, ii. 123.
206. Calliaud, on this occasion too, complains heavily of Meeran: “The young Nabob and his troops behaved in this skirmish in their usual manner, halting above a mile in the rear, nor ever once made a motion to sustain the English. Had he but acted on this occasion with the least appearance of spirit, and made even a semblance of fighting, the affair must have proved decisive; nor could Cuddum Houssein Khan or his treasure have escaped.” Calliaud’s Narrative, p. 34.
207. On the history of this second invasion of the Mogul Prince, see Scott’s Hist. of Bengal, p. 392–397; Seer Mutakhareen, ii. 91–139; Calliaud’s Narrative of what happened in Bengal in 1760, p. 1–36; Calliaud’s Evidence before the Committee of 1772; Calliaud’s Letters to Holwell’s Tracts, p. 27; Francklin’s Shah Aulum, p. 12.
208. Vansittart’s Narrative, i. 19, 22. The distress at home created by these bills was not inferior to what was endured in India. “The funds of the Company in Europe,” says the same unquestionable authority, “were not sufficient to pay the bills when they became due: and it is a fact well known upon the Royal Exchange, that in the year 1758, the Directors prevailed not without difficulty, upon the bill-holders, to grant a further time for the payment of their bills; if this accommodation had failed, the consequence would have been what I need not name.” A Letter to the Proprietors of the East India Stock from Mr. Henry Vansittart, p. 13.
209. The necessity of an increased expenditure, and the total want of funds for defraying it, under the arrangements of Clive, is satisfactorily defended against objectors by Mr. Vansittart, in his Letter to the Proprietors, p. 17–22.
210. First Report of the Committee in 1772; Vansittart’s Narrative, i. 19–123; Holwell’s Memorial; Scrafton’s Observations on Vansittart’s Narrative; Vansittart’s Letter to the Proprietors of East India Stock in answer to Scrafton; Verelst’s View of the English Government in Bengal; Seer Mutakhareen, ii. 130–160; Scott’s Hist. of Bengal, p. 399–401.
211. It is interesting and delightful to hear the account of the native historian. “When the Emperor left the field of battle, the handful of troops that followed M. Law, discouraged by this flight, and tired of the wandering life which they had hitherto led in his service, turned about likewise and followed the Emperor. M. Law, finding himself abandoned and alone, resolved not to turn his back; he bestrode one of his guns, and remained firm in that posture, waiting for the moment of his death. This being reported to Major Carnac, he detached himself from his main, with Captain Knox and some other officers, and he advanced to the man on the gun, without taking with him either a guard or any Talingas (Sepoys) at all. Being arrived near, this troop alighted from their horses, and pulling their caps from their heads, they swept the air with them, as if to make him a salam: and this salute being returned by M. Law in the same manner, some parley in their language ensued. The Major, after paying high encomiums to M. Law for his perseverance, conduct, and bravery, added these words: ’You have done every thing which could be expected from a brave man; and your name shall be undoubtedly transmitted to posterity by the pen of history: now loosen your sword from your loins, come amongst us, and abandon all thoughts of contending with the English.’ The other answered, ’That if they would accept of his surrendering himself just as he was, he had no objection; but that as to surrendering himself with the disgrace of being without his sword, it was a shame he would never submit to; and that they might take his life if they were not satisfied with that condition.’ The English commanders, admiring his firmness, consented to his surrendering himself in the manner he wished; after which the Major with his officers shook hands with him, in their European manner, and every sentiment of enmity was instantly dismissed on both sides. At the same time the Major sent for his own palaukeen, made him sit in it, and he was sent to camp. M. Law, unwilling to see or to be seen, shut up the curtains of the palaukeen for fear of being recognised by any of his friends at camp; but yet some of his acquaintances, hearing of his being arrived, went to him. The Major, who had excused him from appearing in public, informed them that they could not see him for some days, as he was too much vexed to receive any company. Ahmed Khan Koteishee, who was an impertinent talker, having come to look at him, thought to pay his court to the English by joking on the man’s defeat; a behaviour that has nothing strange, if we consider the times in which we live, and the company he was accustomed to frequent; and it was in that notion of his, doubtless, that with much pertness of voice and air, he asked him this question; ’And Biby (Lady) Law, where is she?’ The Major and the officers present, shocked at the impropriety of the question, reprimanded him with a severe look, and very severe expressions: ’This man,’ they said, ’has fought bravely, and deserves the attention of all brave men; the impertinences which you have been offering him may be customary amongst your friends and your nation, but cannot be suffered in ours, which has it for a standing rule, never to offer an injury to a vanquished foe.’ Ahmed Khan, checked by this reprimand, held his tongue, and did not answer a word. He tarried about one hour more in his visit, and then went away much abashed; and, although he was a commander of importance, and one to whom much honour had been always paid, no one did speak to him any more, or made a show of standing up at his departure. This reprimand did much honour to the English; and, it must be acknowledged, to the honour of those strangers, that as their conduct in war and in battle is worthy of admiration, so, on the other hand, nothing is more modest and more becoming than their behaviour to an enemy, whether in the heat of action, or in the pride of success and victory; these people seem to act entirely according to the rules observed by our ancient commanders, and our men of genius.” Seer Mutakhareen, ii. 165, 166.
212. Major Carnac (see his Evidence in the Third Report of the Committee of 1772) beheved that he owed nothing at all.
213. Both insisted upon the fact, that Ramnarain was ready to account fairly. In a letter of Major Carnac’s to the Select Committee, dated 13th April, 1761, he says, “I have long had reason to suspect the Nabob had ill designs against Ramnarain, and have now found my suspicions to be too true. His Excellency (the Nabob) made a heavy complaint to me yesterday, in the presence of Mr. M’Guire, Major Yorke, Messrs. Lushington and Swinton, that there was a considerable balance due on the revenues of this province. Ramnarain has declared to me, that he was ready to lay the accounts before him; however, as the two parties differ widely in their statements, Mr. M’Guire and I proposed, that they should each make out their accounts, and refer them to your board, who would fairly decide between them. This, which I thought was a reasonable proposal, was so far from being satisfactory to the Nabob, that he plainly declared, nothing less could satisfy him than the Mahraje’s being removed from the Naibut of this province before be returned to Moorshedabad. “First Report of the Committee in 1772, App. No. 13. In his evidence before the Committee, Carnac says, “The plea of his being in arrear was the pretext always made use of for oppressing him, but without foundation; for in the frequent conversations I had with Ramnarain on the subject, he always seemed ready to come to a fair and equitable account.”
214. Vansittart’s Narrative, i. 141–271; The Evidence of Carnac and Coote in the First Report, and that of Clive, M’Guire, and Carnac, in the Third Report of the Committee, 1722; Scott’s Hist. of Bengal, p. 404–409; Seer Mutakhareen, ii. 160–181; Verelst’s View of the English Government in Bengal, p. 47.
215. His payments to the Company consisted of twenty-six lacs of sicca rupees, of 2s. 8 1/2d., together with fifty-three lacs of current rupees, of 2s. 4d., derived from the ceded districts. See Vansittart’s Minute, Narrative, ii. 33.
216. Mr. Verelst says, (View of Bengal, p. 8 and 46) “The reader must here be informed, that a trade, free from duties, had been claimed by the Company’s servants, supported by their forces, and established by the last treaty with Meer Jaffier; and that this article, though condemned by the Directors, was afterwards transcribed into the treaty with his son Nudjum al Dowlah. The contention during two years with Meer Cossim, in support of this trade, greatly weakened the country government, which his subsequent overthrow quite annihilated. At this time many black merchants found it expedient to purchase the name of any young writer in the Company’s service, by loans of money, and under this sanction harassed and oppressed the natives. So plentiful a supply was derived from this source, that many young writers were enabled to spend 1,500l. and 2000l. per annum, were clothed in fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day.”—“A trade was carried on without payment of duties, in the prosecution of which infinite oppressions were committed. English agents or gomastahs, not contented with injuring the people, trampled on the authority of government, binding and punishing the Nabob’s officers, whenever they presumed to interfere. This was the immediate cause of the war with Meer Cossim.”
217. The following letter to the Nabob from one of his officers affords a specimen of the complaints; it is dated Backergunge, May 25, 1762: “The situation of affairs at this place obliges me to apply to your honour for instructions for my further proceedings.—My instructions which I brought here were, that in case any Europeans or their servants committed any disorders, they were to be sent to Calcutta, notwithstanding any pretence they shall make for so doing.—Notwithstanding the rigour of these orders, I have ever made it my business (when any thing trifling happened) to endeavour, by gentle means, to persuade the gentlemen’s gomastahs here to act in a peaceable manner; which, although repeated several times, has had no effect; but, on the contrary, has occasioned their writing complaints of me to their respective masters, that I obstructed them in their business, and ill-used them; and in return I have received menacing letters from several gentlemen, threatening, if I interfere with their servants, to use such measures as I may repent; nor have the gentlemen only done this, their very gomastahs have made it public here, that in case I stop them in any proceeding, they will use the same methods; for the truth of which I have good proofs. Now, Sir, I am to inform you what I have obstructed them in; this place was of great trade formerly, but now brought to nothing by the following practices.—A gentleman sends a gomastah here to buy or sell. He immediately looks upon himself as sufficient to force every inhabitant, either to buy his goods or sell him theirs; and on refusal (in case of non-capacity), a flogging or confinement immediately ensues. This is not sufficient even when willing, but a second force is made use of, which is to engross the different branches of trade to themselves, and not to suffer any persons to buy or sell the articles they trade in; and if the country people do it, then a repetition of their authority is put in practice; and again, what things they purchase, they think the least they can do is, to take them for a considerable deal less than another merchant, and often times refuse paying that, and my interfering occasions an immediate complaint.—These, and many other oppressions which are daily practised, is the reason that this place is growing destitute of inhabitants, &c.—Before, justice was given in the public cutcheree, but now every gomastah is become a judge; they even pass sentences on the Zemindars themselves, and draw money from them by pretended injuries.” Vansittart’s Narrative, ii. 112.
218. Clive, in his speech, March 30, 1772, afterwards published by himself, said, “The natives paid infinitely more—and that this was no remedy to the grievance of which the Nabob complained.” See Almon’s Debates, from April 1772 to July 1773, where the speech is reprinted, p. 9. The Company afterwards rated the duties at forty per cent., and called this “a treaty exacted by force to obtain to their servants a sanction for a trade to enrich themselves.”
219. In the Council, the President and Mr. Hastings were, as before, the only dissentients, and said (see their minute, Consultation, March 24), “We cannot think the Nabob to blame (in abolishing the duties); nor do we see how he could do otherwise. For although it may be for our interest to determine, that we will have all the trade in our hands, take every article of the produce of the country off the ground at the first hand, and afterward send it where we please free of customs, yet it is not to be expected that the Nabob will join with us in endeavouring to deprive every merchant of the country of the means of carrying on their business, which must undoubtedly soon be the case, if they are obliged to pay heavy duties, and we trade in every article on the footing before-mentioned.—Neither in our opinion could the Nabob in such circumstances collect enough to pay the expense of the chokeys, collectors, &c. As to the Nabob’s rights to lay trade open, it is our opinion, that the Nazim of every province has a right to any thing for the relief of the merchants trading under his protection.” Vansittart, iii. 74.
220. This adventurer came to India as a serjeant in the French army.
221. It appears by Munro’s evidence (First Report, Committee, 1772) that such a promise was made to them, and through Major Adams.
222. Scrafton’s Observations on Vansittart’s Narrative, p. 48, 49.
223. Clive’s Speech, March 30th, 1772, in Almon’s Debates, x. 14.
224. Mr. Gray, resident at Maulda, of date January, 1764, wrote to the President, “Since my arrival here, I have had an opportunity of seeing the villanous practices used by the Calcutta gomastahs in carrying on their business. The government have certainly too much reason to complain of their want of influence in their country, which is torn to pieces by a set of rascals, who in Calcutta walk in rags, but when they are set out on gomastahships, lord it over the country, imprisoning the ryots and merchants, and writing and talking in the most insolent, domineering manner to the fouzdars and officers.” In like manner, Mr. Senior, Chief at Cossimbuzar, wrote, in March, 1764, “It would amaze you, the number of complaints that daily come before me of the extravagances committed by our agents and gomastahs all over the country.” See Verelst, p. 49.
225. “Your Committee then examined Archibald Swinton, Esq. who was Captain in the army in Bengal in 1765, and also Persian interpreter and Aid-de-Camp to General Carnac: And he informed your Committee, That he had frequent conversations with Meer Jaffier about the five lacks of rupees per month, stipulated to be paid by Meer Jaffier in October, 1764, and the other demands made on him by the Board; of which he frequently heard Meer Jaffier complain bitterly; and of all the demands made upon him at that time, which had not been stipulated in the treaty with the Company on his restoration—particularly the increased demand for restitution of losses, and the donation to the navy.” Third Report, Committee, 1772.
226. See the Extract at length in the Second Report, Select Committee, 1772. In another letter to the Governor and Council of Bengal, dated 24th December, 1765, the Directors say, “Your deliberations on the inland trade have laid open to us a scene of most cruel oppression, which is indeed exhibited at one view of the 13th article of the Nabob’s complaints, mentioned thus in your Consultation of the 17th October, 1764: ’The poor of the country, who used always to deal in salt, beetelnut, and tobacco, are now deprived of their daily bread by the trade of the Europeans, whereby no kind of advantage accrues to the Company, and the Government’s revenues are greatly injured.’ We shall for the present observe to you, that every one of our servants concerned in this trade has been guilty of a breach of his covenants, and a disobedience to our orders. In your Consultations of the 3d of May, we find among the various extortionate practices, the most extraordinary one of buijaut, or forcing the natives to buy goods beyond the market price, which you there acknowledged to have been frequently practised. In your resolution to prevent this practice you determine to lorbid it, ’but with such care and discretion as not to affect the Company’s investment, as you do not mean to invalidate the right derived to the Company from the phirmaund, which they have always held over the weavers:’ As the Company are known to purchase their investment by ready money only, we require a full explanation how this can affect them, or how it ever could have been practised in the purchase of their investment, (which the latter part of Mr. Johnstone’s minute, entered on Consultation the 21st July, 1764, insinuates); for it would almost justify a suspicion, that the goods of our servants have been put off to the weavers, in part payment of the Company’s investment.”
227. Letter to Directors, dated 27th April, 1764. Fourth Report, App. No. 2.
228. Third Report on the Nature, State, and Condition of E. 1. Company, 1772, p. 20–23.
229. Extracts of both Letters are given in the Appendix, No. lxxxii. and lxxxiii. of the Third Report of the Committee, 1772.
230. Mr. Pigot’s Letter to the Nabob, June 28, 1760. Nabob’s Papers, iii. 24.
231. Sir John Lindsay’s Narrative, Oct. 13, 1770, Secretary of State’s Office. Quoted by the author of The History and Management of the East India Company, p. 116.
232. This is evidently the meaning of Mr. Pigot’s letter to the Nabob, of May 31, 1762; from which, by a misinterpretation, the author of the Hist. and Management of the E. I. C. draws an accusation, p. 124.
233. This is stated on the authority of the Nabob’s Letter to Mr. Palk, October 8, 1776. The author of the Hist. and Management, &c. says, “General Laurence, Mr. Bouchier, and particularly Colonel Call, and Mr. Palk, were either present at this transaction, or were convinced of the truth of it, from the incontestable information, given by others as well as by the Nabob; who made heavy complaints to them of the President’s conduct:” p. 127.
234. Letters from the Court of Directors to the President and Council of Fort St. George, 30th December, 1763.
235. Comptoirs.
236. Fort St. David and its dependencies.
237. Bencoolen.
238. Rous’s Appendix, p. 161. This declaration is made in a subsequent correspondence between the Nabob and the Governor and Council, and not denied by the Governor and Council, though such a bargain, they say, was a bad one for the Company.
239. Mr. Pigot’s Letter to the Nabob, August 13, 1763.
240. Official Papers in Rous’s Appendix, No. vi. x. xii. xiii.
241. “Upon my arrival in Bengal,” sad Clive (in his Speech in the House of Commons, ut supra p. 3.), “I found the powers given were so loosely and jesuitically worded, that they were immediately contested by the Council. I was determined, however, to put the most extensive construction upon them, because I was determined to do my duty to my country.”
242. Speech, ut supra, p. 4.
243. Letter, dated Calcutta, 30th September, 1765, from Lord Clive to the Court of Directors, Third Report of Committee, 1772, Appendix, No. 73. In the letter of the same date from the select Committee, which was merely another letter from Clive, by whose nod the other Members of the Committee were governed, they express themselves bound “to lay open to the view of the Directors a series of transactions too notoriously known to be suppressed, and too affecting to their interest, to the national character, and to the existence of the Company in Bengal, to escape unnoticed and uncensured;—transactions which seem to demonstrate that every spring of this government was smeared with corruption; that principles of rapacity and oppression universally prevailed, and that every spark of sentiment and public spirit was lost and extinguished in the unbounded lost of unmerited wealth.” Ib. App. No. 86.
244. Report, ut supra, Appendix, No. 74.
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245. Verelst’s View of the English Government in Bengal, p. 50. For the sums received, and the rate they bore to the sums received by the managers of the preceding revolutions, see the preceding table, p. 326.
246. See the Letters to Bengal, dated 24th Dec. 1765, and 19th Feb. 1766, in the Appendix to the Third Report.
247. Clive, in his letter to the Directors, dated 30th Sept. 1765, says, “My resolution was, and my hopes will always be, to confine our assistance, our conquest, and our possessions, to Bengal, Bahar, and Orixa; To go further is, in my opinion, a scheme so extravagantly ambitious and absurd, that no governor and council in their senses can ever adopt it, unless the whole scheme of the Company’s interest be first entirely new modelled.”
248. Instructions from the Select Committee to the President, dated 21st June, 1765; and their Letter to General Carnac, dated 1st July.
249. The Select Committee express strongly their sense of the ostensible change; in their Consultation, 18th Sept. 1765, describing the Company as having “come into the place of the country government, by his Majesty’s royal grant of the duannee.” See Fourth Report, Committee of Secrecy of House of Commons, 1773. Appendix, No. 38.
250. In his letter, dated Calcutta, 1st February, 1766.
251. The effects of this measure are thus described by the Committee themselves: “As soon as this measure became known by reports from Madras, the young gentlemen of the settlement had set themselves up for judges of the propriety of our conduct, and the degree of their own merit.” It is to be observed that by “young gentlemen,” here is to be understood all those, without exception, who were not of the council, that is, all those whose interests were affected by this unusual proceeding; and they were even joined by several Members of the Council. That Clive should treat it as unendurable in such persons to express an unfavourable opinion upon his conduct, or upon a treatment which they naturally regarded as highly injurious to themselves, is in the genuine strain of power, both in India and Europe. The Committee continue: “They have not only set their hands to the memorial of complaint, but entered into associations unbecoming at their years, and destructive of that subordination, without which no government can stand; all visits to the President are forbidden; all invitations from him and the Members of the Committee are to be alighted; the gentlemen called down by our authority from Madras are to he treated with neglect and contempt.” Even the Secretary to the Council distinguished himself in this association; was dismissed from his office; and suspended the service. The Committee add, “You will be astonished to observe at the head of this list, two members of your Council, who subscribe their names in testimony of their sense of the injustice done to the younger servants.” Letter from the Select Committee to the Directors, dated 1st January, 1766.
252. Select Consultation, 15th August, 1766.
253. Governor Vansittart is very severe in his condemnation of this society. “As I am of opinion,” he says, “that an universal equality of trade in these articles (salt, beetel-nut, and tobacco,) would be the most beneficial footing it could stand upon; so I think that a monopoly of it in the hands of a few men of power is the most cruel and oppressive. The poor people of the country have not now a hope of redress.—It is a monopoly, in my opinion, of the most injurious nature.—I could set forth the unhappy condition of the people, under this grievous monopoly, in the words of a letter, which I have received from one of the country merchants; but I think it needless, because it must occur sufficiently to every reader who has any feeling.” A Letter to the Proprietors of India Stock from Mr. Henry Vansittart, 1767, p. 88, 89, 93.
254. For the preceding train of events, the principal sources of information were the Reports of the Two Committees of the House of Commons in 1772 and 1773; Vansittart’s Narrative; Verelst’s View of Bengal; Scott’s History of Bengal; Seer Mutakhareen; Clive’s Speech.
255. The following is au extract of Clive’s Letter to the Select Committee of 16th of January, 1767, upon his leaving India: “The first point in politics which I offer to your consideration is the form of government. We are sensible that since the acquisition of the duanny, the power formerly belonging to the Subah of these provinces is totally, in fact, vested in the East India Company. Nothing remains to him but the name and shadow of authority. This name, however, this shadow, it is indispensably necessary we should seem to venerate.—Under the sanction of a Subah (Subahdar), every encroachment that may be attempted by foreign powers can effectually be crushed, without any apparent interposition of our own authority; and all real grievances complained of by them can, through the same channel, be examined into and redressed. Be it therefore always remembered, that there is a Subah; and that though the revenues belong to the Company; the territorial jurisdiction must still rest in the chiefs of the country, acting under him and this Presidency in conjunction. To appoint th Company’s servants to the offices of collectors, or indeed to do any act by any exertion of the English power, which can equally be done by the Nabob at our instance, would be throwing off the mask, would be declaring the Company Subah of the provinces. Foreign nations would immediately take umbrage; and complaints preferred to the British court might be attended with very embarrassing consequences. Nor can it be supposed that either the French, Dutch, or Danes, would readily acknowledge the Company’s Subahship, and pay into the hands of their servants the duties upon trade, or the quit-rents of those districts which they may have long been possessed of by virtue of the royal phirmauns, or grants from former Nabobs.”
256. Governor Verelst, in his letter to the Directors, immediately before his resignation, dated 16th December, 1769, says, “We insensibly broke down the barrier betwixt us and government, and the native grew uncertain where his obedience was due. Such a divided and complicated authority gave rise to oppressions and intrigues, unknown at any other period; the officers of government caught the infection, and, being removed from any immediate control, proceeded with still greater audacity. In the mean time we were repeatedly and peremptorily forbid to avow any public authority over the officers of government in our own names,” &c.
257. Clive’s Speech, as published by himself, reprinted in Almon’s Debates for 1772, p. 44.
258. Letters from the Presidency, to the Directors, Verelst’s Appendix.
259. In the letter of the Select Committee to the Directors, dated Fort William, September 26th, 1767, they say, “We have frequently expressed to you our apprehensions lest the annual exportation of treasure to China would produce a scarcity of money in the country. This subject becomes every day more serious, as we already feel in a very sensible manner, the effects of the considerable drain made from the silver currency.” And in their letter of the 16th of December, they add, “We foresee the difficulties before us in making provision agreeably to your orders for supplying China with silver bullion even for this season. We have before repeatedly requested your attention to the consequences of this exportation of bullion; and we now beg leave to recommend the subject to your most serious consideration—assuring you, that, should we find it at all practicable to make the usual remittances next year to China, the measure will prove fatal to your investment, and ruinous to the commerce of Bengal.”—The absurdity of the theory which they invented to account for the want of money, that is, of resources (to wit, the drain of specie) is shown by this fact; that the price of commodities all the while, instead of falling had immensely risen. See the testimonies of Hastings and Francis, in their minutes on the revenue plans, Sixth Report of the Select Committe in 1781, Appendix xiv. and xv.
260. “Past experience,” they say, “has so impressed us with the idea of the necessity of confining our servants, and Europeans residing under our protection, within the ancient limits of our export and import trade, that we look on every innovation in the inland trade as an intrusion on the natural right of the natives of the country, who now more particularly claim our protection; and we esteem it as much our duty to maintain this barrier between the two commercial rights, as to defend the provinces from foreign invasion.” Letter from the Directors, dated 20th November, 1767.
261. The President and Council of Fort William, in their letter (dated the 21st of March, 1769) to the President and Council of Fort St. George, speak in pathetic terms of “the incontestible evidence they had transmitted to their honourable masters of the exaggerated light in which their new acquired advantages had been placed,” and the change of views which they expected them in consequence to adopt.
262. Eighth Report from the Committee of Secrecy, 1773, Appendix, No. i. In their letter 17th March, 1769, they so far modify their former directions as to say, “Upon reconsidering the subject of remittances we find it so connected with that of the investment, that the increase of the former must always depend on that of the latter. The produce of our sales here is the only channel of our receipts; and our flourishing situation in India would not avail us, if we were to suffer ourselves to he drawn upon to the amount of the cost of our homeward cargoes. In order therefore to unite the advantages of the Company and their servants, we do permit you to increase your remittances, by the ships dispatched from Bengal in the season of 1769, beyond the limitation in our letter of the 11th November last, so far as one half of the sum which your investment sent home in that season shall exceed the amount of sixty lacks. But if you do not send home an investment exceeding that sum, you must then confine your drafts upon us agreeably to our said letter of the 11th November last.”
263. In his letter to the Directors, dated 26th September, 1768, he says, “The extent of the Dutch and French credit exceeds all conception, and their bills are even solicited as favours. The precise sums received by them for some years I have endeavoured to ascertain, though hitherto without success; but if we only form our idea from the bills drawn this year from Europe on individuals here and Madras, the amount will appear prodigious and alarming. Advices of drafts and letters of credit have been already received to the amount of twenty-eight lacks on Bengal, and ten on Madras; and I have the most certain information that their treasures at Pondicherry and Chandernagore are amply furnished with all provision for both their investments and expenses for three years to come. You have often complained of the increase and superiority of the French and Dutch investments; but your orders and regulations have furnished them with the most extensive means of both. It is in vain to threaten dismission from your service, or forfeiture of your protection, for sending home money by foreign cash, while you open no doors for remittances yourselves. Such menaces may render the practice more secret and cautious; but will never diminish, much less remove the evil.” Verelst’s Appendix, p. 113. So much did Mr. Verelst’s imagination deceive him, in regard to the prosperity of the English rivals, that the exclusive privileges of the French Company, after they had struggled for some time on the verge of bankruptcy, were suspended by the King, and the trade laid open to all the nation. They were found unable to extricate themselves from their difficulties; and resigning their effects into the hands of government, for certain government annuities to the proprietors of stock, the Company were in reality dissolved. Raynal, liv. viii. sect. 26, 27.
264. The principal materials, before the public, for the history of Verelst’s administration, are found in the Reports of the Two Committees of 1772, and in the Appendix to his own View of Bengal. Information, but needing to be cautiously gleaned, is obtained from the numerous Tracts of the day.
265. It is stated that Clive even entertained the project of obtaining for Mahomed Ali the phirmaun of Subahdar of Deccan; but that the Nabob, who it is true was worn out with the struggle which he had already sustained, who now panted for ease and enjoyment, and whose qualities Clive estimated at more than their actual value (in his correspondence with the Directors he represents his word as more trust-worthy than that of any Mahomedan whom he had ever known. Reports of Committee, 1772), shrunk from the prospect of the arduous enterprise, and declared that “the Deccan was too great for him to desire to have the charge of its government.” Letter from the Nabob to Clive in 1765, MS. quoted (p. 150) by the author of the History and Management of the East India Company.—It is also affirmed, perhaps on better grounds (Observations by the President and Council, on Sir John Lindsay’s Letter of the 22d of June, 1771; Papers in Rous’s Appendix, p. 371) that the Nabob used his endeavours to obtain the exertion of the English power to procure him this high elevation; but met not with a corresponding disposition in the servants of the Company. The point is not of sufficient importance to require that we should spend any time in endeavouring to ascertain whether the one allegation or the other is the truth.
266. Second Report of the Committee of Secrecy in 1781, p. 22; Hist. and Management, p. 151; Collection of Treaties, p. 364.
267. See the illustrations of the Mysore Government, in the instructive volume of Col. Wilks.
268. Colonel Wilks thinks be estimates the amount of it very low at 12,000,000l. sterling. More likely it was not a third of the sum. “The immense property,” he calls it, “of the most opulent commercial town of the East, and full of rich dwellings.” The sound judgment of Colonel Wilks generally preserves him, much better than Oriental gentlemen in general, from the strain of Eastern hyperbole. The richest commercial town of the East, neither a sea-port, nor on any great line of communication, in a situation almost inaccessible, on the top of unwholesome mountains! Besides, there is little opulence in any house in India, or in any shop. The chief article of splendour is jewels, which almost always are carried away, or hid, upon the appearance of danger.
269. Col. Wilks makes, on this occasion, a judicious remark, the spirit of which should have saved him from the pecuniary exaggerations mentioned above. “I have found it proper,” he says, “to distrust my manuscripts in statements of numbers more than in any other case. In no country, and in no circumstance, is it safe to trust to any statement of numbers that is not derived from actual returns. Even Sir Eyre Coote, whose keen and experienced eye might be considered a safe guide, and whose pure mind never harboured a thought of exaggeration, states the force of Hyder, in the battle of Porto Novo, 1st July, 1781, to have been from 140,000 to 150,000 horse and irregular infantry, besides twenty five battalions of regulars; when, it is certain that the whole did not exceed 80,000.” Hist. Sketches, p. 401.
270. For the Life of Hyder, the Researches of Col. Wilks, p. 240–478, are the best source of intelligence.
271. Collection of Treaties (printed 1812), p. 364, 372. The Presidency held up to the Directors the necessity of supporting the Nizam, as a barrier against the Mahrattas—a policy of which the Directors entirely disapproved. Bengal Letter, 16th March, 1768; Fifth Report, Secret. Committee, 1781, Appendix No. 6. See too a letter, 13th May, 1768, Rous’s Appendix, p. [Editor: Illegible Number]17, in which the connection with the Nizam is strongly reprobated. “It is not,” they say, “for the Company to take the part of umpires of Indostan. If it had not been for the imprudent measures you have taken, the country powers would have formed a balance of power among themselves. We wish to see the Indian Princes remain as a check upon one another, without our interfering.”—They declare expressly, “With respect to the Nizam and Hyder Ali, it is our interest that neither of them should be totally crushed.” To the same purpose, see Ib. p. 529. In another letter, dated 17th March, 1769, after telling the Madras Presidency, that they had paid no regard to the above injunctions, and to the whole tenor, which was to the same effect, of all the instructions of their employers, they say, “It is with the utmost anxiety and displeasure that we see the tenth article of the treaty with the Subah, by which he cedes to the Company the Duanny of the Carnatic Balaghaut; a measure so totally repugnant to our most positive and repeated orders, not to extend our possessions beyond the Carnatic. …Our displeasure hereat is aggravated, by the disengenuous manner in which these affairs are represented to us in your advices.” They express a strong opinion on the passion of their servants for interfering extensively with the native powers. “We cannot take a view of your conduct, from the commencement of your negotiation for the Circars, without the strongest disapprobation; and when we see the opulent fortunes, suddenly acquired by our servants, who are returned since that period, it gives but too much weight to the public opinion, that the rage for negotiations, treaties, and alliances, has private advantage for its object more than the public good.” Ibid. p. 520, 521.
272. Letter from the Directors to Governor and Council of Madras, 17th March, 1769.
273. Letter to the Court of Directors, 23d March, 1770; Rous’s App. p. 1415.
274. For these transactions, besides the printed official documents, the well-informed, but not impartial author, of the History and Management of the East India Company, has been, with caution, followed, together with Robson’s Life of Hyder Ali, corrected from authentic MSS. by Mr. Grant.
275. Act 9 Geo. III. c. 24.
276. The manner in which Clive, to enhance the merit of his own services, had puffed the importance of the Indian territory, and inflamed the hopes of treasure which it was to produce, misled the Company. The perpetually recurring interest of their servants to delude them with these hopes, and their perpetual readiness to believe flattering accounts, has been a perennial fountain of misgovernment.
277. These debates are reported in various periodical publications of the time. A good abstract of them is presented in the Annual Register for 1769. A variety of pamphlets was produced by the dispute; of those which have come under the author’s inspection, the following are the titles of the more remarkable: “An Address to the Proprietors of India Stock, showing, from the Political State of Indostan, the Necessity of sending Commissioners to regulate and direct their Affairs abroad; and likewise the Expediency of joining a Servant of Government in the Commission. Printed for S. Bladon in Paternoster Row, 1769;” “A Letter to the Proprietors of East India Stock, containing a brief Relation of the Negotiations with Government, from the Year 1767 to the present Time, respecting the Company’s Acquisitions in India, together with some Considerations on the principal Plans for adjusting the Matters in dispute, which have been discussed in the General Court of Proprietors. Printed for B. White, at Horace’s Head, in Fleet Street, 1769;” “A Letter to the Proprietors of India Stock, containing a Reply to some Insinuations in AN OLD PROPRIETOR’S LETTER TO THE PROPRIETORS on the 13th Inst. relative to the Ballot of that Day. Printed for W. Nicholl, No 51, St. Paul’s Church Yard, 1769;” “A Letter to the Proprietors of E. 1. Stock, by Governor Johnstone. Printed for W. Nicholl, 1769;” “A Letter to the Proprietors of East India Stock, relative to some Propositions intended to be moved at the next General Court, on Wednesday the 12th of July.” Printed as above, 1769.
278. Letter of the Governor and Council to the Directors, 3d Nov. 1772.
279. General Letter to Bengal, 10th April, 1771.
280. For the details and documents relative to this curious part of the history of the Company, see the Eighth Report of the Committee of Secrecy, 1773.
281. Message from the East India Company to the Right Hon. the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Commons of the city of London, in Common Council assembled, dated 27th May, 1773.
282. See 13 Geo. III. c. 63, and 13 Geo. III. c. 64.
283. They were previously debarred from the acceptance of presents, and the Governor from trade. Reliance for probity was placed, as it is so commonly placed, on the greatness of the salaries; as if there was a point of saturation in cupidity; as if the great power which great salaries conter was not the most effectual of all instruments for the undue acquisition of more; and the most effectual of all instruments for covering such acquisition from inquiry or punishment. In as far, then, as the prospect of impunity is a motive, and it is one of the strongest, so far great salaries do not take from, they add to the temptations to corruption. Even Burke, upon this particular, remarked, that “ample salaries removed the necessity indeed, but by no means the inducements, to corruption and oppression.” See Ninth Report of the Select Committee, 1781.
284. That part of the regulations which subjected to the Bengal Council the other Presidencies in matters of peace and war with foreign states, had some effect, though not without drawbacks, in giving unity to the international proceedings of the Company. With the goodness or badness of the internal government, it had no connexion.
285. Mr. Burke, in the Ninth Report of the Select Committee, in 1783, says, “The defect in the institution seemed to be this; that no rule was laid down, either in the act or the charter, by which the Court was to judge. No descriptions of offenders, or species of delinquency, were properly ascertained, according to the nature of the place, or to the prevalent mode of abuse. Provision was made for the administration of justice in the remotest part of Hindostan, as if it were a province in Great Britain. Your Committee have long had the constitution and conduct of this Court before them, and they have as yet been able to discover very few instances (not one that appears to them of leading importance) of rel
286. Ninth Report of the Select Committee, in 1783.
287. “The whole of the regulations concerning the Court of Proprietors relied upon two principles, which have often proved fallacious; namely, that small numbers were a security against faction and disorder; and, that integrity of conduct would follow the greater property.” Ninth Report, ut supra.
288. This is pretty nearly the description of the East India Proprietary which is given by the Committee of the House of Commons. See Ninth Report of the Select Committee in 1783.
289. It was urged by the Minister, that by raising the qualification from 500l. to 1000l., the value of the dividend would govern the Proprietor more than that of the vote; with what sincerity, or what discernment, it is easy to see. Burke, moreover, very justly remarked, that this pecuniary interest might be most effectually served by some signal misdemeanour, which should produce a great immediate advantage, though productive of ultimate ruin. “Accordingly,” he adds, “the Company’s servants have ever since covered over the worst oppressions of the people under their government, and the most cruel and wanton ravages of all the neighbouring countries, by holding out, and for a time actually realizing, additions of revenue to the territorial funds of the Company, and great quantities of valuable goods to their investment.” He added, with obvious truth, “The Indian Proprietor will always be, in the first instance, a politician: and the bolder his enterprise, and the more corrupt his views, the less will be his consideration of the price to be paid for compassing them.” Ninth Report, ut supra.
290. Second Report of the Committee of Secrecy in 1773. The Committee say, “They have not included in the above account any valuation of the fortifications and buildings of the Company abroad. They can by no means agree in opinion with the Court of Directors, ’That the amount of the fortifications, &c. should be added to the annual statement.’”—Undoubtedly no assets of any party can be compared with his debts, farther than they can be disposed of for the payment of those debts; the manure which a farmer has spread upon his fields, or the hedges and ditches with which he has surrounded them, are nothing to him, the moment his lease is expired. The money expended in fortifications and buildings, from May 1757, was stated at nearly four millions.
291. Supra, vol. iii. p. 44.
292. See the third and Eighth Reports of the Committee of Secrecy in 1773.
293. Fifth Report of the Committee of Secrecy.
294. Minutes of Evidence on Mr. Hastings’ Trial, p. 966.
295. This is expressly stated by Hastings, and the Committee of Revenue, in their letter of the 3d of Nov. 1772, in the sixth Report of the Committee of Secrecy, in 1773.
296. Fifth Report of the Select Committee, 1810, p. 5.
297. The Committee of Circuit, in entering upon their task, remark a still more extraordinary failure in the sagacity of the Directors, who did not even foresee, that while their new resolution was totally inconsistent with their former regulations they gave no authority for abolishing them. “They have been pleased,” say the Committee, “to direct a total change of system, and have left the plan and execution of it to the discretion of the Board, without any formal repeal of the regulations which they had before framed and adapted to another system—the abolition of which necessarily includes that of its subsidiary institutions, unless they shall be found to coincide with the new.” Extract, Proceedings of the Committee of Circuit, dated Cossimbuzar, 28th July, 1772, inserted in the Sixth Report, Committee of Secrecy, 1773, p. 21.
298. These reasons are assigned in the Consultation 14th May, Report, ut supra.
299. The reason they assign for this change of title is worth transcribing. “The term ’Supervisor’ was properly suited to the original commission, which was to examine, inspect, and report. This office has been long since annulled; but we apprehend that the continuance of the name, and of many of the residents, in the same stations which they now fill as collectors, may have misled even our Honourable Masters, who were never regularly advised of the change, into the opinion that the first commission still subsisted.” So much for the care of instructing, and the accurate information of the Honourable Directors.
300. Consultation, 14th May, ut supra.
301. Extract of Proceedings, Sixth Report, ut supra. See also Sixth Report of the Select Committee of 1782, Appendix, No. i.; Colebrooke’s Supplement to Digest of Bengal Regulations, p. 174—190; and the Fifth Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons, in 1810, p. 4, 5.
302. For this sketch of the state of the administration of justice in Bengal, see the Seventh Report of the Committee of Secrecy in 1773.
303. Fifth Report, Committee 1810, p. 6. It would appear however, from Hastings’ Minute, 21st November, 1775 (Fifth Report of Committee of Secrecy in 1782, Appendix, No. clvii) that Hastings was averse to the entrusting of a native with the uncontrouled administration of criminal justice, and that it was the act of that hostile majority of the Council, by whom Mahomed Reza Khan was in 1775 raised to the office of Naib Nazim. It is necessary at the same time to state, that the gentlemen of the majority (see their letter of the same date, Ibid.) declare that previous to this measure of theirs, “the administration of criminal justice throughout the country was at a stand.”—It was at a stand, while under the superintendance of the English rulers: What was it likely to be, under a creature, without one atom of power, having the name of a Nabob?
304. Seventh Report, ut supra; General Regulations, dated 15th August, 1772; Colebrooke’s Supplement, p. 1; Fifth Report from the Select Committee on India Affairs, 1810, p. 6.
305. See the Letter, Minutes of Evidence on the Trial of Warren Hastings, Esq., p. 993.
306. Company’s Letter to their President and Council, dated 22nd February, 1764; Minutes, ut supra, p. 996.
307. Committee of Secrecy, 1781, Fifth Report, Appendix, No. iv.
308. Consultation, 11th July, 1772, Minutes of Evidence, ut supra, p. 972.
309. Comp. Consultation, 28th April, 1772, Minutes, ut supra, p. 972; and Consultation, 11th July, 1772, Ibid. p. 978, 994.
310. See the Letter, Minutes, ut supra, p. 974.
311. “Though we have not a doubt but that by the exertion of your abilities, and the care and assiduity of our servants in the superintendancy of the revenues, the collections will be conducted with more advantage to the Company, and ease to the natives, than by means of a Naib Duan; we are fully sensible of the expediency of supporting some ostensible minister in the Company’s interest at the Nabob’s court, to transact the political affairs of the Circar, and interpose between the Company and the subjects of any European power, in all cases wherein they may thwart our interest, or encroach on our authority.” Letter from the Court of Directors to the President and Council at Fort William, 28th August, 1771; Minutes, ut supra, p. 973.
312. “The Committee are fully sensible of the expediency remarked by the Honourable Court of Directors, of holding out the authority of the country government to the European powers, in all cases wherein their interests may interfere with those of the Company.” Consultation, 11th July, 1772, Minutes, ut supra, p. 978. Mr. Hastings in his letter, 24th March, 1774, seems to have questioned altogether the wisdom of clandestinity: “There can be but one government, and one power in this province. Even the pretensions of the Nabob may prove a source of great embarrassment, when he is of age to claim his release from the present state of pupillage which prevents his asserting them.” Ibid. p. 999.
313. Ibid. p. 978.
314. Consultation, 11th July, 1772, Minutes, ut supra, p. 978.
315. Minutes, ut supra, p. 979. It is curious enough that Hastings, in his letter to the Nabob, calls her “The rightful Head of his Family;” and tells him, that “She stands in the place of his deceased Father.” Ib. 980. In a private account to the Secret Committee of Directors, Mr. Hastings states other reasons: the first was, that she was “the declared enemy of Mahomed Reza Khan,” and that it was necessary, in order to obtain evidence of his guilt, to fill every department with the enemies of that prisoner, who was arrested without warning, and whose papers were secured. He adds, “the only man,” he says nothing of a woman, “who could pretend to such a trust was the Nabob Yeteram O’Dowla, the brother of Meer Jaffier; a man indeed of no dangerous abilities, nor apparent ambition, but the father of a numerous family; who, by his being brought so nigh to the Musnud, would have acquired a right of inheritance to the Subahship; and if only one of his sons, who are all in the prime of life, should have raised his hopes to the succession, it would have been in his power at any time to remove the single obstacle which the Nabob’s life opposed to advancement of the family. The guardian, at least, would have been the Nazim, while the minority lasted; and all the advantages which the Company may hope to derive from it, in the confirmation of their power, would have been lost, or could only have been maintained, by a contention hurtful to their rights, or by a violence yet more exceptionable. The case would be the same were any other man placed in that station. The truth is, that the affairs of the Company stand at present on a footing which can neither last as it is nor be maintained on the rigid principles of private justice: You must establish your own power, or you must hold it dependant on a superior, which I deem to be impossible.
“The Begum, as a woman, is incapable of passing the bounds assigned her. Her ambition cannot aspire to higher dignity. She has no children to provide for, or mislead her fidelity. Her actual authority rests on the Nabob’s life, and therefore cannot endanger it; it must cease with his minority, when she must depend absolutely on the Company for support against her ward and pupil, who will then become her master.” Fifth Report, Committee of Secrecy, 1781, Appendix, No. iv.
316. Minutes, ut supra, p. 994: The President goes on, “These reasons will justify the nomination of a man to supply the place of the late Naib Soobah, who is known to be his most violent opponent, and most capable of opposing him. It is not pretended that these ends are to be obtained merely from the abilities of Rajah Gourdass; his youth and inexperience render him, although unexceptionable in other respects, inadequate to the real purposes of his appointment; but his father hath all the abilities, perseverance, and temper, requisite for such ends, in a degree, perhaps, exceeding any man in Bengal. These talents, heretofore, made him obnoxious to government itself, and therefore it might be thought unsafe to trust him with an authority so near the Nabob;….it is therefore proposed to confer it upon his son, who is of himself incapable of making a very bad use of it, and to allow of his acting under the influence and instruction of his father, who, holding no office under the Nabob, and being a subject of our government, may be removed without eclat, or the least appearance of violence, whenever he shall be proved, or even suspected, to abuse his trust.” Messrs. Dacres, Lawrel, and Graham, dissented from the President and the majority, and objected to the appointment of Rajah Goordass, “Because,” say they, “we esteem it, in effect, the appointment of Nundcomar, who, with respect to the various accusations against his political conduct, and the orders which have been in consequence received, stands in such a predicament as to preclude, in our opinion, an acquiescence in the President’s proposition.” Ib. 996. In his answer, the President vindicates the political conduct of Nundcomar, which he affirms to be without blemish, though he says he will “not take upon him to vindicate his moral character.” Ib. 996, 997.
317. Committee of Secrecy, 1781, Fifth Report, Appendix, No. iv.
318. For the above scenes, beside the documents already quoted, see Scott’s Hist. of Bengal, p. 453; and Seer Mutakhareen, ii. 418.
319. Francklin’s Shah Aulum, p. 36. In the Seer Mutakhareen the Vizir is said to have exerted himself to deter the Emperor. The truth is, he acted insidiously; in appearance dissuading the Emperor from the projected expedition, to keep fair with the English; secretly encouraging him to it, from the hopes of profiting, as he did, by this improvident adventure.
320. Scott (Aurungzebe’s Successors, p. 249) mentions ten lacs of rupees, without any other conditions or exactions.
321. Book iii. chap. iv.
322. This chief had impressed, both on Indians and Europeans, the highest opinion of his character. Mr. Verelst, giving an account of the surrounding powers, at the conclusion of his government, thus describes him. “As a man, and a prince, he is perhaps the only example in Hindostan of, at once, a great and good character. He raised himself from the command of fifty horse to his present grandeur, entirely by his superior valour, integrity, and strength of genius; and has maintained himself in it with universal applause, by a spirited and well-grounded system of policy. Experience and abilities have supplied the want of letters and education; and the native nobleness and goodness of his heart have amply made amends for the defect of his birth and family. He is a strict lover of justice, a most faithful subject to his Emperor; and has long been the sole defence and support of the royal family at Delhi. His wisdom and conduct were no where more manifest than in his transactions last year with the Shah Abdalla. He found himself obliged to join him, or expose his country to an immediate invasion, and therefore complied with the necessity; but, at the same time, so protracted their councils, and threw so many secret obstacles in the way of their designs, that, after several months, the Shah finding his troops mutiuous for want of pay or plunder, himself harassed by the Seiks, the heats begun, and the rains approaching, was obliged to return home with disgrace, and rest contented with a sum of money infinitely inferior to what his expedition had promised. Another man in such a situation would probably have lost his life or liberty; but Nujeeb ad Dowla, by his prudence, at once saved his dominions, and extricated himself. He is now about sixty years old, and his constitution much worn down by fatigue and sickness; so that it is probable he will soon be succeeded by his eldest son Zabita Khan, aged near thirty-five, who, to all his father’s virtues, joins the improvements of a liberal education.” Verelst to the Courts of Directors, March 28, 1768.
323. Of this, Mr. Verelst had left his decided conviction upon record. “There is something in the constitution of the Rohillas which must ever make them weak and inconsiderable as aggressors. Their government is divided into chiefships: but no one chief has singly troops or resources to enterprise a foreign war. When attacked, their national affection will unite, the common cause will animate them. A private contest will not rouse them; nor is it practicable to engage their voice on any other motive than the general safety.” Verelst, Appendix, No. 28.
324. For the preceding facts, see the Papers in the Appendix, No. 21 of the Fifth Report of the Committee of Secrecy in 1781.
325. This is distinctly asserted in a letter of Hafez Rhamet himself, addressed to the Gov. General; and it is too conformable to the state of the circumstances to be liable to any reasonable doubt. Fifth Report, ut supra, App. No. 19.
326. See Sir Robert Barker’s Letter, 23d March, 1773, Ibid. App. No. 18.
327. Fifth Report, ut supra, App No. 18.
328. Ibid.
329. Ibid. App. No. 12.
330. Fifth Report, ut supra, App. No. 19. See also his Minute, addressed to the New Government, Ibid. No. 45; and his Answer to the first of the Charges of Burke.
331. “I found him,” (says he, in his Appeal to the Directors, dated 3d Dec. 1774, Fifth Report, ut supra, App. No. 45,) “still equally bent on the design of reducing the Robillas, which I encouraged, as I had done before, by dwelling on the advantages which he would derive from its success.”
332. Appeal, ut supra.
333. Ibid.
334. See the official letters of Sir Robert Barker, who commanded the British forces upon the spot, Fifth Report, ut supra, App. No. 18. He condemned the assistance given to the destruction of the Rohillas, but less on the score of justice, than expediency. See his Minute, ut supra, App. No. 23. The Rohillas, among other reasons, alleged with truth, that merely driving the Mahrattas across the river was no deliverance, as they would return the very next campaign. See Barker’s Evidence, in Minutes of Evidence before the House of Commons, May 2d, 1786. Sir Robert was asked; “Were the Mahrattas in fact prevented from invading the Rohillas, by any acts of Sujah Dowla, or by his protection of that country?—No.”
335. Appeal, ut supra. This is a contradiction to his former assertion, that the acquisition of the Rohilla country made his territories more defensible. True. But having a bad cause to defend, his apology is full of contradictions. There can be no doubt that the Rohillas, whose troops were among the best and bravest of Hindustan, were a barrier against the Mahrattas. But the desire of territory and plunder blinded the Vizir; that of money, the Governor.
336. Fifth Report, ut supra, App. No. 19.
337. Hastings’ Report, App. No. 19, ut supra; Letter of 17th June, 1744, App. No. 25.
338. Francklin’s Shah Aulum, p. 54. Letter of Col. Champion; Fifth Report, ut supra, App. No. 45; and the treaty itself, App. No. 27. Scott’s Aurungzebe’s Successors, p. 259, 260.
339. Fifth Report, ut supra, App. Nos. 22, 23, 24, 25.
340. Letter of Col. Champion to the Hon. Warren Hastings, &c. 24th April, 1774; Fifth report, ut supra, App. No. 26.
341. “The inhumanity and dishonour,” says Col. Champion, in his letter of June 12, 1774, “with which the late proprietors of this country and their families have been used, is known all over these parts; a relation of them would swell this letter to an immense size. I could not help compassionating such unparalleled misery; and my requests to the Vizir to show lenity were frequent, but as fruitless as even those advices which I almost hourly gave him, regarding the destruction of the villages, with respect to which I am now constrained to declare, that though he always promised as fairly as I could wish, yet he did not observe one of his promises, nor cease to overspread the country with flames, till three days after the fate of Hafez Rhamet was decided.”—In another letter he says, “Above a lack of people have deserted their abodes in consequence of the defeat of Hafez.” Ibid. App. No. 27. In another, “The whole army were witnesses of scenes that cannot be described.” That the President was perfectly aware of the designs of the Vizir, before his engagement to assist in them, sufficiently appears from his own letter to that chief, dated the 22d of April, 1773. “I have received,” says he, “your Excellency’s letter, mentioning…. that if, should the Rohillas be guilty of a breach of their agreement [viz. about the forty lacs], we will thoroughly exterminate them, and settle your Excellency in the country, you will in that case pay the Company fifty lacs of rupees, and exempt them from the King’s tribute.” Ibid. App. No. 21. In the nabob’s own letter to the President, of the 18th November, 1773, he says, “During our interview at Benares, it was agreed that I should pay, &c…. and that I should, with the assistance of the English forces, endeavour to punish and exterminate the Rohillas out of their country.” Ibid. App. No. 22. Mr. Hastings only admits the atrocities in part, and then defends them in a curious manner; that is to say, not only by the example of Indian barbarity in general, but by the example of British barbarity, on the subjects of the Vizir. “I believe it to be a truth,” says he, “that he [the Vizir] begun by sending detachments to plunder. This I pronounce to have been both barbarous and impolitic. But too much justified by the practice of war established among all the nations of the East; and I am sorry to add by our own; in an instance (which the Vizir has a right to quote in vindication of the charge against him), of a detachment employed in the war in which we were engaged with him in the year 1764 to burn and ravage his country.” He then quotes a letter from Major Champion, who commanded the detachment, which says, “Two separate parties have been sent into the enemy’s country, the one of which was as high up as Buxar, and (according to the directions given me) there are destroyed upwards of a thousand villages. Had not the rains, &c. prevented, we should have done very considerably more damage.” Minute of the Governor-General, dated 10th Jan. 1775, in the Fifth Report, ut supra, App. No. 45.
342. App. No. 45, ut supra.
343. Letter of 23d May, and 14th July, App. ut supra, No. 27.
344. See the correspondence, Fifth Report, ut supra, App. No. 27, and Col. Champion’s long defensive letter, Ibid. App. No. 45. See also No. 28, of the Bengal Treaties, in the Collection of Treaties, &c. with the native Princes, printed in 1812. Rampore, and some dependent districts, formed the territory bestowed upon Fyzoolla Khan.
345. Fifth Report, ut supra, App. No 12.
346. Company’s Letter to Bengal, 3d March, 1775, Ibid. App. No. 46.
347. Fifth Report, ut supra, p. 37, and App. No. 43.
348. Memoirs relative to the state of India, by Warren Hastings, Esq p. 21.
349. Fifth Report, ut supra, p. 7 and 35.
350. Ibid. p. 8.
351. Ibid. p. 35.
352. Ibid. p. 8.
353. Ibid. p. 35.
354. Fifth Report, ut supra, p. 41.
355. The Directors not only condemned the retention of the correspondence, and sent repeated orders for its disclosure, which were never obeyed; but arraigned the very principle of a private agent. “The conduct of our late Council,” say they, “in empowering the President to prepare instructions for Mr. Middleton as agent at the court of Sujah Dowla, without ordering them to be submitted to the Board for their inspection and approbation, was very improper. And it is our express direction, that no such independent or separate authority be ever delegated, to any Governor, or Member of Council, or to any other person whatsoever; but that all instructions to public agents be laid before the Council, and signed by a majority of the Members, before they be carried into execution.” Letter to Bengal, 15th December, 1775, Fifth Report, ut supra, Appendix, No. 46.
356. On the supposition of the injustice of the Rohilla war, these forty lacs ought to have been paid not to the Company, but to the sufferers: Sujah Dowla ought to have been compelled to restore the unhappy refugees to their homes; and to make compensation. But neither the party, who now possessed all the powers of government, though they reprobated the Rohilla war, nor the Court of Directors, though they solemnly condemned it, ever uttered a wish for the restoration of the expatriated and plundered Rohillas; for a farthing of compensation for their loss, or alleviation to their miseries, either out of their own revenues, or those of the Vizir. The cry about justice, therefore, was a cheap virtue to them; and they were so much the less excusable than the Vizir and Mr. Hastings, that these actors in the scene denied its injustice, and were consistent: the Directors, and the condemning party, were inconsistent; if conscious of that inconsistence, hypocritical; if not conscious, blind.
357. See the Documents in the Appendix, Nos. 44, 45, and 46 of the Fifth Report, ut supra. They are also to be found in the Minutes of Evidence, exhibited to the House of Commons on the Oude charge; and once more in the Minutes of the Evidence exhibited on the trial of Mr. Hastings in Westminster Hall.
358. Fifth Report, ut supra, with Appendix, No. 44 and 45.
359. See the Exposé Statistique du Tunkin, published in London, in 1811, from the papers of M. de la Bissachere, a French Missionary, who had spent twenty-six years in the country.
360. See Fifth Report, ut supra, Appendix, No. 35.
361. To the documents adduced in the Fifth Report, ut supra, add the anecdotes related by a man who had access to the conversation of the best informed of his countrymen, Mr. James Forbes, in his Oriental Memoirs, the fifteenth and two subsequent chapters.
362. Fifth Report, Appendix, No. 47.
363. Fifth Report, p. 60. Extract of a general Letter, dated 31st March, 1769.
364. Surat was still governed nominally by a Mogul Nabob, who was however now, in a great measure, dependant upon the Company.
365. Vide supra, p. 531.
366. Fifth Report, ut supra, p. 69.
367. Forbes, Oriental Memoirs, ii. 32.
368. Mr. Forbes, who was private secretary to the commanding officer of the British detachment, gives us, though less of the campaign than of other objects, our best particulars, in the chapters xvi. to xx. of his Oriental Memoirs.
369. Fifth Report, App. No. 54. They, notwithstanding, failed not to approve of the acquisition when made. See p. 550, below.
370. The ignorance respecting the Mahrattas, of the Supreme Council, at this time, even of Mr. Hastings, not to speak of Mr. Francis and his party is very conspicuous in the Minutes of their consultations.
371. Fifth Report, ut supra, App. No. 102.
372. Ibid. No. 105.
373. See Fifth Report, ut supra, p. 24–29, and 60–88, with the corresponding articles in the Appendix.
374. Fifth Report, ut supra, App. No. 137. Compare p. 541, above.
375. Report, ut supra, p. 97, 98, and App. No. [Editor: Illegible Number], 168. Also Scott’s Aurungzebe’s Successors, p. 249–267.
376. Wherein lay the difference between this case, and that of Mahomed Reza Khan, and the Rajah Shitabroy?
377. Another contrast to the case of Mahomed Reza Khan.
378. See Defence of Mr. Hastings at the Bar of the Lords.
379. Minutes of Evidence on the Trial, p. 1048.
380. Accordingly this jurisdiction had hitherto been exercised with great timidity; and the consent of the government was always asked before the sentence was executed. In one case, and but one, there had been a conviction for forgery, but the prisoner was not executed—he received a pardon. See the Seventh Report of the Committee of Secrecy, in 1773, p. 17.
381. For the preceding charges against Mr. Hastings, and the proceedings of the Council, see the Eleventh Report of the Select Committee, in 1781, with its Appendix; Burke’s Charges against Hastings, No. 8, and Hastings’s Answer to the Eighth Charge, with the Minutes of Evidence on the Trial, p. 953–1001; and the Charges against Sir Elijah Impey, exhibited to the House of Commons by Sir Gilbert Elliot, in 1787, with the Speech of Impey in reply to the first charge, printed, with an Appendix, by Stockdale, in 1788. For the execution and behaviour of Nuncomar, see a very interesting account, written by the sheriff who superintended, and printed in Dodsley’s Annual Register for 1788, Historical part, p. 157.
382. Sixth Report of the Committee of Secrecy, in 1773; Bengal Consultations, 14th May, 1772, p. 18.
383. Extract of Bengal Revenue Consultations, 17th March, 1775; Parliamentary Papers, printed in 1787; see also the Fifteenth of the Charges exhibited to Parliament against Warren Hastings, Esq. and his Answer to the same.
384. How strange a language this from the pen of the man, who, but a few months before, had represented the power of the shadow of this shadow, the Naib Subah, as too great to exist with safety to the Company in the hands of any man !
385. Fifth Report of the Select Committee in 1781; and the Bengal Consultations in the Appendix, No. 6.
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