1760-65 95. Condition of Bengal after Clive's Second Departure from India, 1760-1765.-The most prominent question which now called for the action of the Government was the condition of India. After the departure of Clive, the chief authority in the management of the Company's affairs was Mr. Vansittart, a man of good intentions but of moderate capacity. Under his weak government, the native princes could no longer be kept in subjection, and while the affairs of the Company were on the verge of bankruptcy, its servants were amassing wealth by bribery and extortion. Meer Jaffier, whom Clive had set up in the nabobship of Bengal, rebelled against his protectors, and was superseded by his son-in-law, Meer Cossim (1760); the latter then resented the oppression of the Company's agents, removed his Court from Moorshedabad to Monghir, 200 miles further from Calcutta, and began to prepare for hostilities. On this Meer Jaffier was restored, and Meer Cossim, first revenging himself by the massacre of the English residents in the factory at Patna, fled to the dominions of the Nabob of Oude (5th Oct., 1763).* At this time, Shah Alum, the titular Emperor of Delhi, was an exile at the Court of Oude, having been driven from his capital by a Mahratta invasion; and in return for this protection he had named Sujah Dowlah, the Nabob, his Vizier. These three The Nabob princes now combined all their resources, and advanced against the English under Sir Hector Munro, whom they Buxar. met at Buxar, a hundred miles higher up the Ganges than Patna. After a fierce engagement, they were signally defeated (Oct., 1764); Shah Alum then escaped to the English camp, and the latter carried on the war in his own name. Early in the next year (1765) Allahabad, the capital of Oude, was taken; the Nabob then retired to Lucknow, and effected an alliance with Holkar, the Mah ratta prince. of Oude defeated at These disturbances now began to excite great uneasiness at home; and as it was felt that Clive alone could save the empire which he had founded, he was sent out with full powers, as Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Bengal.t 96. Clive's Reforms in the Government of Bengal.—Clive landed at Calcutta in May, 1765, and found the government even more fearfully disorganised than he had anticipated. He therefore instituted reforms forthwith. The receiving of presents was rigidly prohibited, and the private trade of the Company's servants was put down; but as their salaries were utterly inadequate to the requirements * Stanhope's England, VII., 213; Blackie's Comprehensive History of India. + Stanhope's England, VII., 217-219; Macaulay's Lord Clive. CHAP. VI. of comfortable life in India, he granted them, by way of compensation, a share in the salt monopoly. These measures were not mutiny against Clive's reforms. effected without exciting the strongest opposition on the part of the civilians; but Clive turned out the most factious of his opponents, and the rest submitted. He then attacked the abuses of the military departments, by stopping the large dole, or double batta, The soldiers which had been granted to the officers and soldiers, after the battle of Plassey, by Meer Jaffier, but which was now taken out of the Company's revenues. This retrenchment excited a mutiny; two hundred officers, led by Sir Robert Fletcher, the second in command, conspired to resign in a body on the same day. Clive again was equal to the emergency. The leaders in the plot were arrested, tried and cashiered; and the rest, humbled and dispirited, begged to be permitted to withdraw their resignations. While the indomitable Governor thus reformed the civil service and established his authority over the army, he was equally successful in his foreign policy. His landing on Indian ground was the signal for immediate peace. The the Nabob Nabob of Oude, who then lay on the frontiers of Bahar Surrender of with a large army, where he had been joined by many of Oude. Afghans and Mahrattas, dismissed Meer Cossim, and offered to agree to such terms as the new Governor chose to dictate. The Government of Bengal was placed on a new footing, and a dewannee, or public deed, was obtained from the fallen Emperor, empowering the Company to exercise the sole right of administration, and collect all the revenues throughout the provinces of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa. The Nabob of Bengal raised no objection to this arrangement, which virtually deprived him of his dominions; for he still continued to reside at his capital, Moorshedabad, surrounded with regal state, and supported by an ample pension.* It formed, however, a part of Clive's policy, that the Nabob's revenue should, for the present at least, be directed by a native Prime Minister, resident at Moorshedabad, but responsible only to Clive's departure from Indi. Calcutta. Two competitors appeared for the great office -Nuncomar, the head of the Brahmins, and Mahomed Reza Khan, the head of the Mussulmans. The choice of Clive fell upon the latter. Having thus in the course of eighteen months, restored the Company's affairs to order, and laid *This was the illegitimate and infant son of Meer Jaffier, who died a short time before Clive's arrival in India. The deceased Nabob's inheritance was disputed, and the English Council at Calcutta, ón receipt of a bribe of £140,000, supported the above son, who, of course, was too young, while his party was too weak, to prevent the transfer of his sovereignty to the English. 1767-72 the foundation of good government, Clive returned to Europe at the close of January, 1767.* At this period, the Company were at the height of prosperity. Their net revenue was upwards of two millions; their debt was under seven millions. The annual profits of their trade amounted to half a million, and they readily agreed to pay £400,000 per annum to the State, in respect of the territorial revenues of India, to which the State laid claim.t 97. Appointment of the First Governor-General of India.While the affairs of the Presidency of Bengal were thus being reorganised, the Presidency of Madras became involved in at war with the Madras a war with the most skilful and daring of all the enemies Hyder Ali whom the English had yet encountered in India. This was Hyder Ali, a Mussulman adventurer, who had made Presidency. himself master of Mysore, and by various wars extended his frontiers northward, nearly to the river Kistna. His posts at Mangalore and elsewhere, on the Malabar coast, gave him the means of raising a fleet. Roused by his ambition, without as yet fully appreciating his genius, the English at Madras engaged in a confederacy against him with the Nizam and the Mahrattas. But the new Rajah bought off the Mahrattas; he defeated the Nizam at Trincomalee (September, 1767), and compelled him to make peace; he proved himself a match for the English both of Madras and Bombay; and in the end he also extorted from them an advantageous peace. The Company's trade suffered so much through these hostilities, that in the spring of 1769 India Ruinous stock fell 60 per cent.; in the following year a grievous of the famine overspread Bengal, and carried off one-third of the Company's inhabitants; and the Company's affairs, through disasters and misrule, again fell so low, that the attention of Parliament was drawn to them, and committees of inquiry appointed (1772). In the following year, the Directors were unable to pay the imperial tribute of £400,000; and they were forced to borrow nearly a million and a quarter to save themselves from impending bankruptcy. Their dividend, which had been as high as 10 and 12 per cent., was reduced to 6. condition affair. Lord North's Government then took the alarm, and an Act was passed, known by the name of the Regulating Act, which made a material change in the constitution of the Company. The Governor of Lord North's Bengal was thenceforward invested with supreme authority over Regulating all the presidencies, under the title of Governor-General; but he Act. was to act under the control of a council, the members of which, *Stanhope's England, VII., 217-227; Macaulay's Essay. Blackie's Comprehensive History of India, Book V., chapter 1-2. E E CHAP. VI. as well as himself, were to be appointed, in the first instance by the Crown for five years, and afterwards by the Directors, subject to the Crown's approbation. A supreme Court of Judicature, to consist of a Chief Justice, and three Puisne Judges, also appointed by the Crown, was constituted at the same time and armed with all the powers of the superior courts of law and equity in England. Under these arrangements Warren Hastings, who had been appointed to the Government of Bengal in the previous year, was named the first Governor-General. In the course of these proceedings Lord Clive was subjected to very rigid examinations before the Parliamentary Committees of Inquiry, and a vote of censure was moved against him, chiefly on account of his transactions A Parliamen with Omichund and the forgery of Admiral Watson's sigtary vote of nature. Some of the resolutions which asserted these and censure on Lord Clive. other undeniable facts, were carried; but in the end, the House agreed almost unanimously to the following additional words drawn up by Wedderburn, then Solicitor-General, "That Robert Lord Clive did at the same time render great and meritorious services to his country." Such a vote was almost a verdict of acquittal; but the taunts to which Clive had been subjected in his examinations had sunk deep into his haughty mind; and his melancholy temperament, now aggravated by ill health, and want of active occupation, induced him to lay violent hands on himself (22nd November 1774), just as he had completed his forty-ninth year. His death. 98. Erection of the Presidency of Bengal into a Sovereign State. -Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of India, was born in 1732; Character of Warren Hastings. educated at Westminster School; and at the age of seventeen entered the Company's service as a writer. He passed through the various gradations of the service with credit and success, and in 1772 was advanced to the first post in the Council of Bengal. He was spare in form and shrunk in features, with a mild voice and gentle manners; but possessed of unswerving determination and resolute fixity of purpose. The idea of British sovereignty in India had long been realised in his lofty mind; and no man was more thoroughly impregnated with the conviction expressed in Clive's memorable dictum, that where it was too late to draw back, the path of safety lay in pressing forward. Thus influenced, and in obedience to instructions from home, Hastings proceeded to abolish the phantom government of the Nabob at Moorshedabad; Mahomed Reza Khan was arrested on charges brought against him by Nuncomar; his office was done away with, and the entire administration of the affairs of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa was removed to Calcutta. The fiction of the Emperor's nominal sovereignty was next * Stanhope's England, VII., 227-238; Blackie's India, Book V., chapter 4. in the hands chief. between 1773 attacked. This helpless monarch had frequently applied to the English for assistance against the Mahrattas, and his requests not being acceded to, he took the opposite course The Emperor of throwing himself into the hands of Scindia, the Mahratta of Scindia chief, by whom he was conducted to his ancestral seat of the Mahratta Delhi. In return for this service, Scindia exacted a grant of the districts of Corah and Allahabad, which Clive had compelled the Nabob-Vizier of Oude to restore to the Emperor. This transfer being made without any reference to the Calcutta Government, and to the aggrandisement in fact of its enemies, Hastings not only determined to resume these districts, but he further resolved to discontinue the payment of all tribute from Bengal, while the Emperor continued in his present alliance. Bengal was thus made independent of the Emperor, as it was before of the Nabob; and as the expense of maintaining the forfeited districts would exceed the utmost revenue they would bring, they were yielded to the Nabob-Vizier by a treaty at Benares (Sept., 1773) for the sum of fifty lacs of rupees *Alliance (£500,000). By this same treaty Hastings agreed to assist Hastings the Nabob of Oude in the reduction of the Rohillas, and the band of Afghan free lances who had served under the stan- Oude. dard of the Moguls, and had obtained for their reward the fertile country which lies between Oude and Delhi, named from this circumstance, the Rohilcund. The Vizier claimed their allegiance as chief officer of the empire; he had also other claims against them, and knowing that his rabble of the plains could not stand firm against these hardy mountaineers, he sought the aid of English bayonets. This request came when the Bengal treasury was loaded with debts, and the Court of Directors at home were pressing the Governor for large remittances. Hastings accordingly gave the required assistance for a sum of £400,000; the Rohillas were attacked and defeated with great slaughter, and their territory was annnexed to the Vizier's dominions. But the campaign was conducted with merciless cruelty by the Vizier, although the British officers used every effort to restrain him; and the accounts which reached Europe, shocked the public mind, and tarnished the reputation of England.† a Nabob of The Rohil War. 99. Dissensions between Hastings and the New Council.-At the close of this war the three new Members of Council appointed under the Regulating Act, with the Judges of the Supreme Court, * Stanhope's England, VII., 242-249; Macaulay's Warren Hastings. + Stanhope, VII., 250-251; Blackie's Comprehensive History, Book V., chapter 4. |