Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/545

Rh HASTINGS 513 dAbacl. It was there that he first came into collision with t le Bengali Brahman, Nandkumar, whose subsequent fate throws so deep a shadow upon his own fair fame. During his three years of office as resident he was able to render n &amp;gt;t a few valuable services to the Company ; but it is more i nportant to observe that his name nowhere occurs in 4 he official lists of those who derived pecuniary profit from the necessities and weakness of the native chiefs. In 1761 he was promoted to be member of council, under the presi dency of Mr Vansittart, who had been introduced by Clive from Madras. The period of Vansittart s government has baen truly described as &quot; the most revolting page of our Indian history.&quot; The entire duties of administration were suffered to remain in the hands of the nawab, while a few irresponsible English traders had drawn to themselves all reil power. The members of council, the commanders of the troops, and the commercial residents plundered on a grand scale. The youngest servant of the Company claimed the right of trading on his own account, free from taxation and from local jurisdiction, not only for himself but also for every native subordinate whom he might permit to use his name. It was this exemption, threatening the very foundations of the Mussulman government, that finally led to a rupture with the nawab. Macaulay, in his celebrated essay, has said that &quot; of the conduct of Hastings at this time little is known.&quot; As a matter of fact, the book which Macaulay was professing to review describes at length the honourable part consistently taken by Hastings in opposition to the great majority of the council. Some times in conjunction only with Vansittart, sometimes abso lutely alone, he protested unceasingly against the policy and practices of his colleagues. On one occasion he was stigmatized in a minute by Mr Batson with &quot; having espoused the nawab s cause, and as a hired solicitor de fended all his actions, however dishonourable and detri mental to the Company.&quot; An altercation ensued. Batson gave him the lie, and struck him in the council chamber. When war was actually begun, Hastings officially recorded his previous resolution to have resigned, in order to repudi ate responsibility for measures which he had always opposed. Waiting only for the decisive victory of Buxar over the allied forces of Bengal and Oudh, he resigned his seat and sailed for England in November 1764. After fourteen years residence in Bengal Hastings did not return home a rich man, estimated by the oppor tunities of his position. According to the custom of the time he had augmented his slender salary by private trade. At a later dite, he was charged by Burke with having taken up profitable contracts for supplying bullocks for the use of the Company s troops. It is admitted that he conducted by means of agents a large business in timber in the Gan- gatic sandarbans. When at Falta he had married Mrs Cimpbell, the widow of an officer. She bore him two children, of whom one died in infancy at Miirshidabad, and was shortly followed to the grave by her mother. Their common gravestone is in existence at the present day, bearing date July 11, 1759. The other child, a son, was sent to England, and also died shortly bsfore his father s return. While at home Hastings is said to have attached himself to literary society; and it may be inferred from his own letters that he now made the personal acquaintance of Samuel Johnson and Lord Mansfield. In 1766 Ii3 was called upon to give evidence before a com mittee of the House of Commons upon the affairs of Bengal. The good sense and clearness of the views which ha expressed caused attention to be paid to his desire to be agiin employed in India. His pecuniary affairs were embarrassod, partly from the liberality with which he had endowed his few surviving relatives. The great influence of Lord Clive was also exercised on his behalf. At last, in the winter of 1768, he received the appointment of second in council at Madras. Among his companions on his voyage round the Cape were the Baron Inihoff, a speculative portrait painter, and his wife, a lady of some personal attractions and great social charm, who was des tined henceforth to be Hastings s life-long companion. Of his two years work at Madras it is needless to speak in detail. He won the good-will of his employers by devot ing himself to the improvement of their manufacturing business, and he kept his hands clean from the prevalent taint of pecuniary transactions with the nawab of the Carnatic. One fact of some interest is not generally known. He drew up a scheme for the construction of a pier at Madras, to avoid the dangers of landing through the surf, and instructed his brother-in-law in England to ob tain estimates from the engineers Brindley and Smeaton. In the beginning of 1772 his ambition was stimulated by the nomination to the second place in council at Bengal with a promise of the reversion of the governorship when Mr Cartier should retire. Since his departure from Bengal in 1764 the situation of affairs in that settlement had scarcely improved. The second governorship of Clive was marked by the transfer of the diivdm or financial fid- ministration from the Mogul emperor to the Company, and by the enforcement of stringent regulations against the besetting sin of peculation. But Clive was followed by two inefficient successors ; and in 1770 occurred the most terrible Indian famine on record, which is credibly esti mated to have swept away one-third of the population. In April 1772 Warren Hastings took his seat as president of the council at Fort William. His first care was to carry out the instructions received from home, and effect a radical reform in the system of government, dive s plan of governing through the agency of the native court had proved a failure. The directors were determined &quot; to stand forth as diivdn, and take upon themselves by their own servants the entire management of the revenues.&quot; All the officers of administration were transferred from Mur- shidabad to Calcutta, which Hastings boasted at this early date that he would make the first city in Asia. This reform involved the ruin of many native reputations, and for a second time brought Hastings into collision with the wily Brahman, Nandkumar. At the same time a new settlement of the land revenue on leases for five years was begun, and the police and military systems of the country were placed upon a new footing. Hastings was a man of immense industry, with an insatiable appetite for details. The whole of this large series of reforms was conducted under his own personal supervision, and upon no part of liis multifarious labours did he dwell in his letters home with greater pride. As an independent measure of economy, the stipend paid to the titular nawab of Bengal, who was then a minor, was reduced by one-half to sixteen lakhs a year (say 160,000). Macaulay imputes this re duction to Hastings as a characteristic act of financial immorality ; but in truth it had been expressly enjoined by the court of directors, in a despatch dated six months before he took up office. His pecuniary bargains with Sujah Daula, the nawab wazir of Oudh, stand on a differ ent basis. Hastings himself always regarded them as incidents in the general scheme of his foreign policy. The Mahrattas at this time had got possession of the person of the Mogul emperor, Shdh Alam, from whom Clive obtained the grant of Bengal in 1765, and to whom he assigned in return the districts of Allahabad and Kora and a tribute of 300,000. With the emperor in their camp, the Mahrattas were threatening the province of Oudh, and causing a large British force to be cantoned along the fron tier for its defence. Warren Hastings, as a deliberate measure of policy, withheld the tribute clue to the emperor, XI. 65