Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/546

Rh 514 HASTINGS and resold Allahabad and Kora to the wazir of Ouclh. The Mahrattas retreated, and all danger for the time was dissipated by the death of their principal leader. The wazir now bethought him that he had a good opportunity for satisfying an old quarrel against the adjoining tribe of llohillis, who had played fast and loose with him while the Mahratta army was at hand. The Rohillas were a race of Afghan origin, who had established themselves for some generations in a fertile tract west of Ouclh, between the Himalayas and the Ganges, which still bears the name of Rohilkhand. They were not so much the occupiers of the soil, as a dominant caste of warriors and freebooters. But in those troubled days their title was as good as any to be found in India. After not a little hesitation, Hastings con sented to allow the Company s troops to be used to further the ambitious designs of his Oudh ally, in consideration of a sum of money which relieved the ever-pressing wants of the Bengal treasury. The Rohillas were defeated in fair fight. Some of them fled the country ; and so far as pos sible Hastings obtained terms for those who remained. Th3 fighting, no doubt, on the part of the wazir was con ducted with all the savagery of Oriental warfare; but there is no evid3ns3 that it was a war of extermination. Meanwhile, the affairs of the East India Company had again come under the consideration of Parliament. The Regulating Act, passed by Lord North s ministry in 1773, effected considerable changes in the constitution of the Bengal Government. The council was reduced to four members with a governor-general, who were to exercise certain indefinite powers of control over the presidencies of Madras and Bombay. Hastings was named in the Act as governor-general for a term of five years. The council con sisted of General Clavering and the Hon. Colonel Monson, two third-ratepDliticians of considerable parliamentary influ ence ; Philip Francis, then only known as an able perma nent official ; and Barwell, of the Bengal Civil Service. At the same tiim a supreme court of judicature was appointed, composed of a chief and three puisne judges, to exercise an indeterminate jurisdiction at Calcutta. The chief- justice was Sir Elijah Impey, already mentioned as a schoolfellow of Hastings at Westminster. The whole tendency of the Regulating Act was to establish for the first tim.3 the influence of the crown, or rather of parlia ment, in Indian affairs. The new members of council dis embarked at Calcutta on the 19th of October 1774; and on tli9 following day commenced the long feud which scarcely terminated twenty-one years later with the acquittal of Warren Hastings by the House of Lords.&quot; Macaulay states that ths members of council were put in ill-humour because their aaluto of guns was not proportionate to their dignity. In a contemporary letter Francis thus expresses the same petty feeling : &quot; Surely Mr H. might have put on a ruffled shirt.&quot; Taking advantage of an ambiguous clause in their commission, tha majority of the council (for Barwell uni formly sided with Hastings) forthwith proceeded to pass in review the recent measures of the governor-general. All that hs had done they condemned ; all that they could they reversed. Hastings was reduced to the position of a cipher at their meetings. After a time they lent a ready ear to detailed allegations of corruption brought against him by his old enemy Nandkumar. To charges from such a source, and brought in such a manner, Hastings disdained to reply, and referred his accuser to the supreme court. The majority of the council, in their executive capacity, resolved that the governor-general had been guilty of pecu lation, and ordered him to refund. A few days later Nandkumar was thrown into prison on a stale charge of forgery, tried before the supreme court sitting in bar, found guilty by a jury of Englishmen, and sentenced to be hanged. That Hastings set this prosecution in motion, no I reasonable person can doubt ; and it is equally clear that Chief-Justice Impey is free from all personal blame. The majority of the council abandoned their supporter, who was
 * executed in due course. He had forwarded a petition for

reprieve to the council, which Clavering took care should not be presented in time, and which was subsequently burnt by the common hangman on the motion of Francis. At the time no one dared to impute to Hastings the crime of a judicial murder. But though he had thus silenced the charges brought-against him, a combination of circumstances placed him in a position of fresh difficulty. While the strife was at its hottest, he had sent an agent to England, with a general authority to place his resignation in the hands of the Company under certain conditions. The agent thought fit to exercise that authority. The resignation was promptly accepted, and one of the directors was appointed to the vacancy. But in the meantime Colonel Monson had , died, and Hastings was thus restored, by virtue of his . casting vote, to the supreme management of affairs. He refused to ratify his resignation ; and when Clavering attempted to seize on the governor-generalship, he judici- ! ously obtained an opinion of the supreme court in his own favour. From that time forth, though he could not always command an absolute majority in council, Hastings was never again subjected to gross insult, and his general policy was able to prevail. A crisis was now approaching in foreign affairs which demanded all the experience and all the genius of Hastings for its solution. Bengal was prosperous, and free from ex ternal enemies on every quarter. But the Government of . federacy at a time when France was on the point of de claring war against England, and when the mother-country found herself unable to subdue her rebellious colonists in j America. Hastings did not hesitate to take upon his own shoulders the whole responsibility of military affairs. All the French settlements in India were promptly occupied, On the part of Bombay, the Mahratta war was conducted with procrastination and disgrace. But Hastings amply avenged the capitulation of Wargaon by the complete suc cess of his own plan of operations. Colonel Goddard with a Bengal army marched across the breadth of the penin sula, from the valley of the Ganges to the western sea, and achieved almost without a blow the conquest of Guzerat. Captain Popham, with a small detachment, stormed the rock fortress of Gwalior, then deemed impregnable and the key of Central India ; and by this feat held in check Sindia, the most formidable of the Mahratta chiefs. The bhonsla, or Mahratta raja of Nagpur, whose dominions bordered on Bengal, was won over by the diplomacy of an emissary of Hastings. But while these events were taking place, a new source of embarrassment had arisen at Calcutta. The supreme court, whether rightly or wrongly, assumed a jurisdiction of first instance over the entire pro vince of Bengal. The English common law, with all the absurdities and rigours of that day, was arbitrarily extended to an alien system of society. Zaminddrs, or government renters, were arrested on mesne process ; the sanctity of the zandna, or women s chamber, as dear to Hindus as to Mahometans, was violated by the sheriff s officer ; _ the deepest feelings of the people and the entire fabric of revenue administration were alike disregarded. On this point the entire council acted in harmony. Hastings and Francis went joint-bail for imprisoned natives of dis tinction. At last, after the dispute between the judges and the executive threatened to become a trial of armed force, Hastings set it at rest by a characteristic stroke of policy. A new judicial office was created in the name of the Company, to which Sir Elijah Impey was appointed, though he never consented to draw the additional salary
 * Bombay had hurried on a rupture with the Mahratta con-