Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/548

516 which he had so frequently appeared, with his reputation clear, but ruined in fortune. However large the wealth he brought back from India, all was swallowed up in defraying the expenses of his trial. Continuing the line of conduct which in most other men would be called hypocrisy, he forwarded a petition to Pitt praying that he might be reimbursed his costs from the public funds. This petition, of course, was rejected. At last, when he was reduced to actual destitution, it was arranged that the East India Company should grant him an annuity of £4000 for a term of years, with £90,000 paid down in advance. This annuity expired before his death; and he was compelled to make more than one fresh appeal to the bounty of the Company, which was never withheld. Shortly before his acquittal he had been able to satisfy the dream of childhood, by buying back the ancestral manor of Daylesford, where the re- mainder of his life was passed in honourable retirement. In 1813 he was called on to give evidence upon Indian affairs before the two Houses of Parliament, which received him with exceptional marks of respect. The university of Oxford conferred on him the honorary degree of D.C.L. ; and in the following year he was sworn of the Privy Council, and took a prominent part in the reception given to the duke of Wellington and the allied sovereigns. He died on the 22d of August 1818, in his 86th year, and lies buried behind the chancel of the parish church, which he had recently restored at his own charges. In physical appearance, Hastings “looked like a great man, and not like a bad man.” The body was wholly sub- jugated to the mind. A frame naturally slight had been further attenuated by rigorous habits of temperance, and thus rendered proof against the diseases of the tropics. Against his private character not eveu calumny has breathed a reproach. As brother, as husband, and as friend, his affec- tions were as stedfast as they were warm. By the public le was always regarded as reserved, but within his own inner circle he gave and received perfect confidence. In his dealings with money, he was characterized rather by liberality of expenditure than by carefulness of acquisition. A classical education and the instincts of family pride saved him from both the greed and the vulgar display which marked the typical “ nabob,” the self-made man of those days. He could support the position of a governor- general and of a country gentleman with equal credit. Concerning his second marriage, it suffices to say that the Baroness Imhoff was about forty years of age, with a family of grown-up children, when the complaisant law of her native land allowed her to become Mrs Hastings. She survived her husband, who seems to have cherished towards her to the last the sentiments of a lover. Her children he adopted as his own; and it was chiefly for her sake that he desired the peerage which was twice held eut to him. Hastings’s public career will probably never cease to be a subject of controversy. It was his misfortune to be the scape-gozt upon whose head Parliament laid the accumu. lated sins, real and imaginary, of the East India Company. If the acquisition of our Indian empire can be supported on ethical grounds, Hastings needs no defence. No one who reads his private correspondence will admit that even his least defensible acts were dictated by dishonourable motives. It is more pleasing to point out certain of his public measures upon which no difference of opinion can arise. He was the first to attempt to open a trade route with Thibet, and to organize a survey of Bengal and of the eastern seas. It was he who persuaded the pandits of Bengal to disclose the treasures of Sanskrit to European scholars. He founded the Madrasa or college for Ma- hometan education at Calcutta, primarily out of his own funds; and he projected the foundation of an Indian Institute in England. The Royal Asiatic Society was estab- lished under his auspices, though he yielded the post of president to Sir W. Jones. No Englishman ever under- stood the native character so well as Hastings; none ever devoted himself more heartily to the promotion of every scheme, great and small, that could advance the prosperity of India. Natives and Anglo-Indians alike venerate his name, the former as their first beneficent administrator, the latter as the most able and the most enlightened of their own class. If Clive’s sword conquered the Indian empire, it was the brain of Hastings that planned the system of civil administration, and his genius that saved the empire in its darkest hour.

1em  HASTINGS,, (1754–1826), ranks among those governors-general of India who, completing the work of Clive and Warren Hastings, achieved the creation of the Indian empire of England. The services of Lord Hastings in this respect were special and important. He was both governor- general and commander-in-chief in India from 1813 till the end of 1822; during that period he carried two important wars, the Nepaulese and the Mahratta, to a successful issue ; while adding to the territories of the East India Company, he in several respects altered and improved their policy ; and by the sagacity and at the same time the generosity of his own administration (in which he exhibited the true qualities of a Christian proconsul) he won reverence from the natives and left a great name in India. Lord Hastings was in no way connected with Warren Hastings; his family name was Rawdon. His father, Sir John Rawdon of Moira in the county of Down, fourth baronet, was created Baron Rawdon of Moira, and after. wards Earl of Moira, in the Irish peerage. His mother was the Lady Elizabeth Hastings, daughter of the ninth earl of Huntingdon. Both his father and mother appear to have been persons of considerable ability and high culti- vation. Lord Rawdon, as he was then called, having gone at an early age to the university of Oxford, joined the army in his seventeenth year as ensign in the 15th foot. His life henceforth was entirely spent in the service of his country, and may naturally be divided into four periods :— from 1773 to 1782 he was engaged with much distinction in the American war ; from 1783 to 1813 he held various high appointments at home, and took an active part in the business of the House of Lords; from 1813 to 1823 was the period of his labours in India; after retiring from which, in the last years of his hfe (1824-1826), he was governor of Malta. In America Lord Rawdon served at the battles of Bunker’s Hill, Brooklyn, White Plains, Monmouth, and Camden, at the attacks on Forts Washington and Clinton, and at the siege of Charleston. In fact he was engaged in all the chief operations of the war. Perhaps his most noted achievements were the raising of a corps at Phila- delphia, called the Irish Volunteers, who under him became famous for thcir fighting qualities, and the victory of Hob-