Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/243

 Cornwallis Cornwallis had great advantages over Warren Hastings, who had been thwarted and interfered with by his council, for he was enabled to act, under the new arrangements of Pitt and Dundas, in all cases of emergency in direct opposition to the opinion of his council. Yet he had great difficulties; the revenue was badly collected, the civil servants were flagrantly corrupt, and while the princes within the power of the company's officials were pillaged, the independent princes were shaken in their opinion of English invincibility by the events of the second Mysore war. Cornwallis's first task was to examine into the corruption of the civil servants. He soon discovered that it was hopeless to remedy the mischief without radical reforms, and in a despatch full of wisdom (ib. i. 266-8) he announced to the directors that he had rearranged the salaries of the collectors on such a scale that they should not have to resort to peculation in order to obtain adequate incomes. Cornwallis's reforms in the military forces of the company were of hardly less importance than those of the civil service. The utter inefficiency of the company's European troops, as compared with the king's troops, had caused the promulgation of a scheme for consolidating them into one royal army, obeying the king's regulations; but the dislike felt by officers in the company's service to entering the royal army prevented them from helping in this consolidation, which was never carried into effect. The best company's officers were all employed with native troops, and were hardly likely to abandon their chances of the colonelcy of a sepoy regiment, with from 7,000l to 8,000l. a year, in order to become officers in the king's service, where promotion was governed by political interest (ib. i. 333). Though he had to abandon this scheme, Cornwallis never ceased to demand more English regiments from home, and he urged the despatch of more regiments from England, and the gradual decrease of the company's Europeans without insisting upon the scheme of consolidation. These labours of reform in the civil and military services and his ceaseless war against jobs of all sorts fully occupied the time of Cornwallis for the first three years of his Indian government; but a storm was gathering in the south which threatened the English power.

The letters of the governor-general at this time to his only son, Lord Brome, then a boy at school, are worth a notice, as showing the simple loving nature of the man. 'You must write to me by every opportunity,' he tells his son on 17 Sept. 1786, 'and longer letters than I write to you; for I have a great deal more business every day than you have on a whole school day, and I never get a holiday. I have rode once upon an elephant, but it is so like going in a cart, that you would not think it very agreeable' (ib. i. 218). Again he writes to Lord Brome on 28 Dec. 1786: 'You will have heard that soon after I left England I was elected a knight of the Garter, and very likely laughed at me for wishing to wear a blue riband over my fat belly. . . . But I can assure you upon my honour that I neither asked for it nor wished for it. The reasonable object of ambition to a man is to have his name transmitted to posterity for eminent services rendered to his country and to mankind. Nobody asks or cares whether Hampden, Marlborough, Pelham, or Wolfe were knights of the Garter. Of all things at present I am most anxious to hear about you. The packet that was coming to us overland, and that left England in July, was cut off by the wild Arabs between Aleppo and Bussora' (ib. i. 236).

The outbreak of the third Mysore war for a time stopped the progress of Cornwallis's peaceful reform in Bengal. The Madras government was weak and corrupt, and after the retirement of Sir Archibald Campbell (1739-1791) [q. v.] the utter neglect of all precautions emboldened Tippoo Sultan in 1790 to attack a faithful ally of England, the Rajah of Travancore. In the first campaign of the war Cornwallis left the command of the troops to General Medows, the new commander-in-chief at Madras, but the failure of that general to do anything but capture Coimbatore made it necessary for Cornwallis to proceed himself to Madras, and to take command of the troops on 12 Dec. 1790. The campaign of 1791 was not one of a paramount importance, but every movement in it and every siege undertaken were necessary for the completion of the great end Cornwallis proposed to himself, the capture of Seringapatam and final overthrow of Tippoo's power. On 7 March the pettah, and on 21 March the citadel, of Bangalore were stormed, and on 13 May Cornwallis reached Arikera, within nine miles of Seringapatam itself. But it was too late in the season to undertake a great siege; Cornwallis did not know where the Mahrattas or Robert Abercromby's force from the west coast were, and therefore, after defeating Tippoo on the 15th, he destroyed his battering train and heavy baggage, and commenced his retreat to Bangalore. Hardly had he retired when he was joined by Hurry Punt and the Mahratta cavalry, and he immediately planned out a great campaign for the following year. His political ability was shown in the manner in which he obtained the