Impeachment of Warren Hastings

The arrival of Marquis Cornwallis in England—Impeachment and trial of Warren Hastings—Indian administration of Sir John Shore.

MARQUIS CORNWALLIS arrived in England early in 1794. His administration, though not so peaceful as had been anticipated, had been so successful as to unite in its favour the suffrages of all who did not think it necessary to make political capital out of his real or supposed deficiencies. As early as January, 1793, the court of proprietors unanimously resolved, that his statue should be placed in the court-room at the India House, in order “that his great services might be ever had in remembrance;” and in June following, another unanimous resolution bestowed upon him an annuity of £5000, which was to commence from the date of his quitting India, and to be paid to his heirs, executors, administrators, or assigns for the term of twenty years. The honours and rewards conferred on Marquis Cornwallis present a striking contrast to the return which Mr. Hastings received for his services. On the 28th of June, 1785, shortly after his return to England, he attended the court and received the formal thanks of the directors, but eight days before Mr. Burke had risen in his place in parliament, and pledged himself “that if no other gentleman would undertake the business, he would at a future day make a motion respecting the conduct of a gentleman just returned from India.” Mr. Burke, in making this announcement, is said to have allowed himself to be carried by his zeal farther than his party were inclined to follow him. The administration of Mr. Hastings could scarcely be made a party question. Among both the great political parties he had many zealous supporters, and there was therefore a danger that the opposition in attacking him might not only sustain a defeat, but by alienating some of their most powerful friends permanently weaken their strength. Mr. Burke was perhaps superior to such considerations. He had persuaded himself that Mr. Hastings was a great criminal, and he felt bound to leave no means untried to bring him to justice. His friends, however, either because they did not share his convictions, or because they deemed it quixotic to act upon them when no party advantage was likely to be gained, would have been satisfied with allowing the censure of Mr. Hastings, which stood upon the journals of the House of Commons, to remain unrescinded, or with raising a discussion which might enable them to repeat the censure in some sterner form. It may have been owing to the comparative indifference of his party that Mr. Burke allowed the session to pass away without taking any steps to carry his announced intention into effect.

The subject having thus apparently dropped, would not, it is thought, have been revived, had not Mr. Hastings and his friends made so sure of victory, that they determined to carry the war into the enemy’s camp. To allow the censure to remain on the journals unrecalled seemed to them equivalent to a confession of guilt, whereas Mr. Hastings, so far from confessing guilt, was boldly claiming honours and rewards. A peerage was talked of, and his agent Major Scott had, after several conferences with Mr. Pitt, carried away the impression that the peerage would be granted if the censure were deleted. Entertaining this conviction, and having no doubt of the support of the ministry, which was at this time equivalent to the support of large majorities in both Houses of Parliament, it is easy to understand why Major Scott, at the very commencement of the new session in January, 1786, called upon Mr. Burke to produce his charges, and fix the earliest possible day for the discussion of them. This challenge could not with decency be refused, and Mr. Burke took his first step on the 18th of February, by moving for certain papers. He began his speech by asking that the 44th and 45th of a series of resolutions which Mr. Dundas had moved on 29th of May, 1782, should be read. These resolutions premising that it was contrary to the wish, honour, and policy of this nation to pursue schemes of conquest in India, and that parliament should give some mark of its displeasure against those who should appear to have wilfully adopted or countenanced such schemes, concluded with declaring that Warren Hastings, Esq., governor-general of Bengal, and William Hornby, Esq., president of the council of Bombay, had in several instances so acted, and that it was therefore the duty of the directors to pursue all legal and effectual means for their removal. After remarking that the task he had undertaken would have been more appropriate in the hands of the mover of these resolutions, Mr. Burke proceeded to explain the course which he wished to pursue. Three courses were open—a prosecution by the attorney-general, a bill of pains and penalties, and impeachment. He preferred the last.

The debate, which followed was remarkable only as indicating the feelings of the ministry. Mr. Dundas, while avowing the sentiments which induced him to move the resolutions, and still disapproving of many things in the conduct of Mr. Hastings, declared his inability to fasten any criminal intention upon him. Besides, Mr. Hastings, subsequently to the date of the resolutions, had rendered important services and merited the vote of thanks which had been given him. Mr. Pitt took similar ground. “It was absolutely necessary,” he said, “in point of justice and right, to examine the whole of the public conduct of any servant of the people, to give him due credit for such parts as were meritorious, as well as to censure him for such as were culpable; and for his own part he should not hesitate one moment to declare that, however censurable some parts of Mr. Hastings’ conduct might be made to appear, he must, notwithstanding, consider such as were praiseworthy as entitled to the warmest approbation—nay, as a sufficient ground for reward and thanks, could they be proved to predominate over what was exceptionable.” All the papers moved for were granted. Another important debate took place on the 3d of April, when Mr. Burke moved that several persons who had been ordered to attend as witnesses should be called to the bar. There cannot be a doubt that such evidence, avowedly ex parte, would have given the accuser an undue advantage. Not having brought forward his charges, he was merely endeavouring to fish out matter of accusation. This was unfair, and at variance with ordinary legal procedure, and therefore the house unquestionably did right in insisting, as a preliminary, that the charges should be put on record. It would seem that Mr. Burke had anticipated this decision; for he brought forward nine articles of charge the very next day, and twelve more in the course of a week; the last article was not brought forward till the 22d of May.

The twenty-two articles of charge, drawn up more in the form of a pamphlet than an indictment, did not omit a single act of Mr. Hastings’ administration in which any semblance of delinquency could be discovered, but it is unnecessary to notice more than the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 7th, and 8th—the 1st because it was rejected by the House of Commons, and the 3rd, 4th, 7th, and 8th, because to them alone the trial was confined. The substance of the 1st charge was, that Warren Hastings, in contradiction of the positive orders of the court of directors, furnished the Nabob of Oude, for a stipulated sum of money to be paid to the East India Company, with a body of troops, for the declared purpose of thoroughly extirpating the nation of the Rohillas. There was good reason for placing this charge in the van. The facts on which it was founded could easily be proved, a complete justification of them seemed impossible, and Mr. Dundas had committed himself by moving a resolution in condemnation of the Rohilla war, and of the conduct of the president and select committee of Bengal in regard to it. Taking these circumstances into consideration, it must have appeared, both to the assailants and to the supporters of Mr. Hastings, that this was the charge from which he had most to fear; and hence, when by the aid of Mr. Pitt, who was at full liberty to give any vote that policy or conscience dictated, and Mr. Dundas, who chose rather to be inconsistent than not to follow his leader, the charge was rejected by a majority of 119 to 67, it was considered by all parties that the question of impeachment was virtually decided, for how was it possible to doubt that all the other charges would be disposed of in a similar way? Hastings now saw his way clear to the peerage. He was to be Lord Daylesford, thus taking his title from the ancestral property by the purchase of which he had realized the aspiration of his boyhood, and to have a seat at the India board.

So much were these arrangements believed to be settled, that the opposition was only expected to make an almost hopeless trial of strength on one or two other charges, and then drop all further proceedings.

The rejection of the Rohilla charge occurred on the 1st of June; on the 13th, passing over the 2d charge, which related to the treatment of Shah Alum, Mr. Fox moved the 3d or Benares charge. It was in substance as follows: That Warren Hastings, in violation of agreements, by which Cheyte Sing, the Rajah of Benares, was liable only in a fixed annual contribution, and on the plea of a French war, extorted from the rajah repeated additional contributions, and, on his refusal or inability to pay them, dispossessed him of his territories and drove him into exile. It was not to be expected that those who had failed to discover impeachable matter in the treatment of the Rohillas, would see anything to startle them in the treatment of Cheyte Sing. Mr. Fox was followed by Mr. (now Sir) Philip Francis, who had obtained a seat in parliament, and was bent on using it as a means of gratifying his old enmities. When Mr. Pitt rose, Mr. Hastings’ friends were in high spirits. They knew that he held Francis in detestation, and were therefore rejoicing in the belief that his speech would not only vindicate Mr. Hastings, but inflict due punishment on his inveterate and vindictive antagonist. Mr. Pitt, in the first part of his speech, confirmed their belief. He maintained that the government of India were entitled to call upon the zindars of Benares for extraordinary contributions on public emergencies, and to punish the contumacious refusal of them. He lauded Mr. Hastings for the ability and presence of mind which he had displayed during the insurrection, and inveighed against Francis in the bitterest terms. The whole tendency of his speech being thus to prove the innocence of Hastings, it only remained to hear him declare his determination to vote an acquittal. How great was the surprise when he suddenly turned round and declared his determination to vote with Mr. Fox! Why? Because though a fine was exigible, the amount which Mr. Hastings exacted, or rather intimated his intention to exact, was oppressive and unjust. His reported language was as follows:—“Upon the whole, the conduct of Mr. Hastings, in the transactions now before the house, had been so cruel, unjust, and oppressive, that it was impossible he, as a man of honour or honesty, or having any regard to faith or conscience, could any longer resist; and therefore he had fully satisfied his conscience, that Warren Hastings, in the case in question, had been guilty of such enormities and misdemeanours as constituted a crime sufficient to call upon the justice of the house to impeach him.”

Mr. Pitt pleaded conscience, but many did not hesitate to attribute his conduct to very unworthy motives. The friends of Mr. Hastings openly accused him of treachery; others spoke only of jealousy. Mr. Hastings had been received with great favour by the king, and what was justly deemed still more remarkable, Mrs. Hastings, the quondam Baroness Imhoff, had overcome the strict morals of Queen Charlotte, and been welcomed at St. James’s. It was difficult to say to what all this favour might lead. Hastings made a peer, seated at the India board, and leagued with his staunch friend Lord Thurlow, who had repeatedly set an example of ministerial insubordination, might yet prove a formidable rival in the cabinet. Such was the kind of surmises employed to account for Mr. Pitt’s sudden conversion. There is not much plausibility in them. Pitt would have disdained to stoop to the shabbiness thus imputed to him, and was too conscious of his own powers to fear the rivalship of Mr. Hastings, who only a few weeks before, when permitted to defend himself at the bar of the House of Commons against the proposed impeachment, had shown how destitute he was of the talent most essential to a ministerial leader, by reading a pamphlet instead of delivering a vigorous and effective speech. The true account of the matter we believe to be, that Mr. Pitt was equally persuaded of the guilt of Mr. Hastings when he voted for him and when he voted against him. In both cases he acted merely as a politician, supporting the accused while he thought he was thereby strengthening his party, and abandoning him when he feared that he might ruin it by forfeiting his popularity. Mr. Dundas, who wheeled round with his leader, referred to the subject in his correspondence with Lord Cornwallis, and says, in a letter dated 21st March, 1787:—“The session (of parliament) has proceeded with uninterrupted triumph. The only unpleasant circumstance is the impeachment of Mr. Hastings. Mr. Pitt and I have not great credit from the undeviating fairness and candour with which we have proceeded in it, but the proceeding is not pleasant to many of our friends, and of course, from that and many other circumstances, not pleasing to us; but the truth is, when we examined the various articles of charges against him, with his defences, they were so strong, and the defences so perfectly unsupported, it was impossible not to concur; and some of the charges will unquestionably go to the House of Lords.¹

Instead of giving Mr. Dundas credit for “the undeviating fairness and candour” which he here claims for himself and Mr. Pitt, the unbiased opinion of most persons now is, that his own subsequent impeachment was a just retribution for his shuffling and hypocritical conduct. Be this as it may, whether the motives of the leaders were pure or paltry, the followers did their bidding as before, and the motion of Mr. Fox was carried by a majority of 119 to 79. As it was now certain that there would be an impeachment, the other articles of charge were carried without much opposition.

The session of parliament closed amid the discussion of these charges, and the ensuing session of 1787 having resumed the discussion, continued occupied with it till late in April. On the 2d of this month, when the articles of charge were brought up, it was resolved, on the suggestion of Mr. Pitt, to appoint a committee to draw up articles of impeachment, before proceeding to vote whether the impeachment ought to be proceeded with. On the proposed committee stood the name of Sir Philip Francis, who, instead of recoiling at the idea of such an appointment, was quite prepared to gratify private malice, under the mask of performing a public duty. This was too much for the honourable feelings of the house, and he was ignominiously rejected, on the ground of private enmity to the accused, by a majority of ninety-six to forty-four. On this occasion, Mr. Dundas ventured to differ with Mr. Pitt, and give a new proof of his “undeviating fairness and candour” by voting in the minority. On the 9th of May, the impeachment was voted. Mr. Burke carried the impeachment to the House of Lords, and Mr. Hastings having been brought to its bar, in the custody of the sergeant-at-arms, was admitted to bail, and allowed till the second day of the ensuing session of parliament to prepare his defence. It is not unworthy of notice that in the same session of 1787, which impeached Mr. Hastings, Sir Gilbert Elliot announced his intention to bring Sir Elijah Impey in the same way to justice. The charges, among which the trial of Nuncomar stood in the foreground, were not brought forward till the following session, but the house had no desire to burden itself with a second impeachment, and Mr. Pitt throwing his shield over Sir Elijah allowed him to escape. After he had been heard in his own defence, a motion for impeachment was negatived by seventy-three to fifty-five.

The trial commenced in Westminster Hall on the 13th day of February, 1788. The interest which it had excited among all classes was intense, and India and its government, which had hitherto been regarded as the most repulsive of all subjects, now fully engrossed the public mind. Much of the interest, doubtless, was factitious, being produced not so much by the importance of the questions at issue, as by the celebrity of the pleaders, the constitution of the court, and the dramatic effect of the scene about to be exhibited. The last has been repeatedly described, and still possesses sufficient historical importance to justify the following quotation from Lord Macaulay:—

“There have been spectacles more dazzling to the eye, more gorgeous with jewellery and cloth of gold, more attractive to grown-up children, than that which was then exhibited at Westminster; but perhaps there never was a spectacle so well calculated to strike a highly cultivated, a reflecting, an imaginative mind. All the various kinds of interest which belong to the near and the distant, to the present and to the past, were collected on one spot, and in one hour. All the talents and all the accomplishments which are developed by liberty and civilization were now displayed, with every advantage that could be derived both from co-operation and from contrast. Every step in the proceedings carried the mind backward, through many troubled centuries, to the days when the foundations of our constitution were laid; or far away over boundless seas and deserts to dusky nations living under strange stars, worshipping strange gods, and writing strange characters from right to left. The high court of parliament was to sit, according to forms handed down from the days of the Plantagenets, on an Englishman accused of tyranny over the lord of the holy city of Benares, and over the ladies of the princely house of Oude.

“The place was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall of William Rufus—the hall which had resounded with acclamations at the inauguration of thirty kings; the hall which had witnessed the just sentence of Bacon, and the just absolution of Somers; the hall where the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment awed and melted a victorious party inflamed with just resentment; the hall where Charles had confronted the high court of justice with the placid courage which has half redeemed his fame. Neither civil nor military pomp was wanting. The avenues were lined with grenadiers. The streets were kept clear by cavalry. The peers, robed in gold and ermine, were marshalled by the heralds under garter king-at-arms. The judges, in their vestments of state, attended to give advice on points of law. Nearly 170 lords, three-fourths of the upper house, as the upper house then was, walked in solemn order from their usual place of assembling to the tribunal. . . . The gray old walls were hung with scarlet. The long galleries were crowded by an audience such as has rarely excited the fears or the emulation of an orator. There were gathered together from all parts of a great, free, enlightened, and prosperous empire, grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, the representatives of every science and of every art.

That the interest taken in this celebrated trial was far more dramatic than real, became apparent in the course of the proceeding. At first the attendance was crowded, and many who could not claim seats by right were glad to purchase them at enormous prices; but after Burke, and Fox, and Sheridan had displayed their matchless eloquence in the opening charges, the excitement rapidly diminished, and the trial, ever and anon interrupted by dry and knotty points of law, was left without much notice to drag out its weary length. When it commenced, there was no event of importance to divide with it the public attention; but in the second year of its existence, the king’s illness, followed by the regency question and a probable change of ministry, were felt to be more engrossing topics, and before the questions which they raised were settled, the affairs of France had come to a crisis, and all Europe was in alarm. The trial, thus regarded as only a secondary object, made little progress. Even in 1788, when it had all the interest of novelty, the lords devoted only thirty-five days to it, and in 1789 only seventeen days. In 1790 a dissolution of parliament took place, and it became a question whether the impeachment had not in consequence fallen, and whether, if it were to be persisted in, it would not be necessary to commence it anew. When it was at length decided that the impeachment was still in force, so much time had been wasted, it was found absolutely necessary to prosecute only those charges on which it seemed most probable that a conviction could be obtained. Mr. Burke had made a general opening on all the charges. Mr. Fox had opened the Benares charge, of which an abstract has already been given; and Mr. (afterwards Baron) Adam the Begum charge, which was in substance as follows: That Warren Hastings, contrary to justice, equity, and good faith, authorized the Nabob of Oude, over whom he had an absolute control, to seize upon the landed estates of his mother and grandmother, his kindred, and principal nobility, as well as the personal property of the two princesses, who, together with their dependants, were, during the enforcing of these measures, treated with atrocious indignity and barbarity. It was now resolved to curtail the proceedings by opening only two other charges, the one relating to presents and the other to contracts.

After these were concluded, Mr. Hastings was still to be heard in reply on every separate charge, and to have an opportunity of rebutting the evidence of his accusers by counter-evidence. In this way seven years from the commencement of the trial were spun out, and the cause was not ripe for decision till the spring of 1795. On the 23rd of April in this year, the lords met for the last time in Westminster Hall. One hundred and seventy walked in procession when the trial commenced; only twenty-nine now voted. On all the charges Mr. Hastings was pronounced not guilty by large majorities, never more than six, usually only three, and sometimes none at all voting him guilty.

This decision had been expected and was generally approved. The managers, particularly Mr. Burke, had stretched their charges to the very utmost, and inserted in them many things which they were unable to substantiate. Every such failure was a victory to Mr. Hastings, because it not only proved his innocence of the particular charge, but attached a degree of doubt to all the others. The language of Mr. Burke was often intemperate, and not only recoiled upon himself and the cause he advocated, but turned the tide of sympathy, and produced a strong reaction in Mr. Hastings’ favour. There were other considerations which operated in the same way. The managers of the trial commanded the national purse, and might expend without limit, while not sustaining the loss of a single farthing; Mr. Hastings was incurring in necessary self-defence an expenditure, by which, even though innocent, he must inevitably be ruined. In some respects, too, the whole proceedings taken against him savoured of hypocrisy and injustice. What had become of the money which he was said to have extorted, and the territories which he was said to have usurped? Part of the money had passed into the British treasury, as the share which the legislature had exacted of an imaginary surplus of Indian revenue, and the remainder appropriated by the Company had helped to eke out their dividends. The territories were in like manner retained, and so far from thinking of restoring them, the Company and the government were quarrelling over them, the one claiming them as corporate, and the other as national property. They were thus at once hypocritically denouncing the alleged spoliation, and pocketing the proceeds of it. Such was the hypocrisy. The injustice was, if possible, still more glaring. Mr. Hastings was a public servant, and as such, bound to act according to the best of his judgment for the benefit of his employers. Mere blunders might prove him incapable, but they did not make him corrupt, and therefore could not form the ground of a penal accusation, except in so far as they implied criminal intention. From such intention the directors, even when they disapproved of his measures, entirely exculpated him, and hence, after they were perfectly aware of the worst things that could be laid to his charge, they more than once renewed his tenure of office. It is evident, therefore, that before the Company gave him a vote of thanks for his services on his return to England, they were barred by their previous approbation of his conduct from afterwards challenging it. It may be said that the acts of the Company could not foreclose the legislature. As a general rule this is true, but in the present instance the legislature was as much foreclosed as the Company. In the Regulating Act, in which parliament took upon itself the appointment of the Bengal council, Mr. Hastings was made the first governor-general. This office he held for five years as the nominee and, by implication, with the approval of parliament, since the power of recall given by the act was not exercised. Nor was this all. When the five years of the Regulating Act expired, separate acts were passed, continuing him from year to year in his office. During this time all the measures charged as criminal in the impeachment were well known, and the fair conclusion therefore was, that the legislature did not condemn, or had condoned them. In either case, Mr. Hastings was entitled to a verdict of acquittal. From these and other considerations that might be urged, it is plain that the lords did right when they repelled all the charges, and found Mr. Hastings not guilty.

The moment the decision of the lords was given, Mr. Hastings was entitled to stand up and say he was an injured man. He had been ruined in his fortunes by a false accusation. The reparation ought, according to the ordinary rule, to have been made by the party which inflicted the injury, and the House of Commons, had its dignity allowed it to confess a fault, would have done no more than equity required, by replacing every farthing which Mr. Hastings had been compelled to spend in his defence. As this, however, was scarcely to be expected, the court of proprietors very properly took the initiative, and passed two resolutions—the one to indemnify him for the expenses incurred in his defence, and the other to grant him and his representatives, during the Company’s exclusive trade, an annuity of £5000 out of the territorial revenue, in consideration of his important services. These resolutions were unavailing without the consent of the Board of Control, and this there was some difficulty in obtaining. Mr. Dundas was at the head of it, and after the part which he had taken in the impeachment, was not generous enough to approve of a grant which virtually condemned it as unjust. After some higgling, it was arranged to grant Mr. Hastings an annuity of £4000 for twenty-eight years and a half, commencing from June 24th, 1785, and to relieve him from present embarrassments by a loan of £50,000, without interest, for eighteen years.

Before parting finally with Mr. Hastings, it will not be out of place here to refer very briefly to his subsequent life. Though he was now only in his sixty-third year, and possessed a constitution so vigorous that he reached his eighty-sixth year in the full possession of his faculties, his public career had already closed. In 1813, when the renewal of the Company’s charter was under discussion, he was one of the witnesses examined at the bar of the House of Commons. Twenty-seven years before he had stood at the same bar to defend himself against an accusation which charged him with heinous crimes. How different his position now! A chair was ordered to be set for him, and when he rose to retire, the whole house, with the exception of the one or two surviving managers of the impeachment, rose and uncovered. He was shortly after made a privy councillor. Something more substantial than honour still awaited him. In 1814 his annuity of £4000, and the period for which £50,000 had been lent him without interest, expired. The annuity was continued for life, and the loan under deduction of £16,000, which had been paid back, was remitted. In 1820, about eighteen months after his death, the court of proprietors resolved to place his statue in the general court-room of the India House, and about the same time his statue was placed in Calcutta by the inhabitants.

The resolution of the court of proprietors was thus expressed:—“That as the last testimony of approbation of the long, zealous, and successful services of the late Right Honourable Warren Hastings, in maintaining, without diminution, the British possessions in India against the combined efforts of European, Mahometan, and Mahratta enemies, the statue of that distinguished servant of the East India Company be placed among the statesmen and heroes who have contributed in their several stations to the recovery, preservation, and security of the British power and authority in India.” This resolution is a tolerably fair specimen of the kind of style in which it has become customary to praise the administration of Mr. Hastings. The injustice to which he was subjected is doubtless a main cause of the encomiums which are now lavished upon him, and it may therefore seem ungracious to object to them as unmeaning and extravagant. Still, when a writer so well informed as Colonel Wilks talks of Mr. Hastings as the Saviour of India, and another writer tries to improve upon the idea, by speaking of him as having come “in the fulness of time,” one may be permitted to ask what the particular services are which fill them with such admiration that, in panting to give utterance to it, they are betrayed into profanity.

Though the House of Lords did right in finding that the criminal intention necessary to infer guilt was not proved, and that therefore Mr. Hastings was not guilty, it ought to be remembered that the facts on which the impeachment proceeded were either proved, or not proved, merely because they were confessed. It is true, then, that Mr. Hastings hired out British troops to the Nabob of Oude, for the express purpose of extirpating the Rohillas, and thereby placed one of the noblest races of Hindoostan at the mercy of a cruel despot, merely because that despot had promised to pay him liberally for his inhumanity and injustice. It is true that Mr. Hastings, when holding the provinces of Allahabad and Corah in trust, either for Shah Alum or the Company, sold them to the same despot for a large sum of money, and thus either cheated Shah Alum, or cheated the Company, by giving for money, provinces which, from their importance as a frontier, were to the Company above money’s worth.

It is true that Mr. Hastings might by a word have saved the life of Nuncomar, and that by refusing to speak that word he became virtually responsible for the judicial murder of a person who was giving evidence against him, and charging him with the grossest corruption. It is true that Mr. Hastings goaded Cheyte Sing into rebellion by extortionate demands, and thereby, so far from replenishing the Company’s treasury, as he had boasted he would do, burdened it with a new load of debt. Finally, it is true that Mr. Hastings, on shuffling pretexts, deprived the Begums of Oude of the protection which the Company were solemnly pledged to give them, and then employed the Nabob of Oude, the son of the one and grandson of the other, to confiscate their estates, and rob them of their personal property, subjecting them and the females of their household during the process to shameful indignities, and extorting money from two of their aged dependants by cruel imprisonment and, it is more than suspected, by actual torture. All these things are true, and the administration under which they were done ought to possess very extraordinary merits indeed to entitle it to any kind of eulogy. What, then, were these merits? The above resolution of the court of proprietors says, that they consisted in maintaining the British possessions in India “without diminution.” This is at best but negative praise. After a vast expenditure of blood and treasure, he left matters no worse than he found them. But then, it is said, consider the formidable confederacy which he had to encounter. True; but what led to that confederacy? Mainly, we believe, the tortuous, vacillating, and short-sighted policy of Mr. Hastings. The Mahrattas were at peace with the Company, and had done nothing to provoke hostilities, when the Bombay council, merely because they coveted one of their possessions, attempted to seize it. War immediately ensued. Mr. Hastings, then in a minority in his council, very properly agreed with the majority in condemning the war; but no sooner had he obtained the majority, than he turned round and gave it his direct and hearty sanction. His only plea in justification was the change of circumstances. When he disapproved of the war, it threatened to be disastrous; it now promised to be successful, and therefore he approved of it. Thus, right and wrong had no weight in his political balance; nothing but success or the want of it was to be allowed to turn the beam. And what was the result? First the disgraceful convention of Worgaum, next the humiliating treaty of Poorundhur, and lastly the equally humiliating treaty of Salbye, by which the Bombay presidency was not only deprived of the only remnant of conquest which the treaty of Poorundhur had left, but stripped of almost all its older possessions, and nearly confined within its original island. The resolution of the proprietors asserts that Mr. Hastings maintained the territories “without diminution.” Was there no diminution when Bombay was thus curtailed, and everything which it possessed in Gujarat handed over, along with a large sum of money, as a kind of peace-offering to Scindia?

If the other principal events in the administration of Mr. Hastings were reviewed, the results would be found to be not one whit more satisfactory. The resolution enumerates “European, Mahometan, and Mahratta enemies.” How the Company fared in their war with the last has just been seen. If by the Mahometan enemy Hyder is to be understood, the allusion is unhappy, since the war with him was only terminated by imploring the intervention of the Mahrattas, to make him disgorge the territories which he had wrested from us, and which we had no hope of being able without this intervention to recover. It must be admitted that on this occasion, though there was no diminution of territory, it was only prevented by something like a stain on the national honour. By the European enemy must of course be meant the French. With them the early part of the struggle was chiefly naval, and so indecisive that neither of the combatants could boast much of their laurels. Latterly, when Sir Eyre Coote’s great military talents were lost to the Company by his sudden death, the Madras army had been sent to Cuddalore, to an expedition which was so ill managed, that it owed its escape from destruction not to any measure of Mr. Hastings, but to the opportune cessation of hostilities on the announcement of an European peace.

It thus appears that all the wars of Mr. Hastings’ administration were either blunders or misfortunes, and that, therefore, much praise cannot be due to the energy which was exerted merely in endeavours to redeem them. Some of the blunders were, as has been seen, committed by Mr. Hastings himself, and though it would be unfair to hold him responsible for the blunders of others, it cannot be forgotten that the measures by which he sought to repair them were as often wrong as right. It is often said that Mr. Hastings, having been refused the powers which were necessary to enable him to act efficiently, and been long thwarted by adverse majorities both in his own council and in the court of directors, is entitled to credit for the measures which he would have adopted, if he had been at liberty to follow his own judgment. Undoubtedly he is entitled both to the credit and to the discredit—credit where the measures would have been good, and discredit where they would have been pernicious. There are two sides to the account, and the only fair method of judging is to strike the balance. It is very doubtful if Mr. Hastings would gain by this process. Had he been left to take his own way, he would have involved the Company in a war with the Nizam, in order to conciliate the favour of the Mahratta Rajah of Berar; at a later period he would have conciliated the favour of the Nizam, by making him a present in perpetuity of the whole Northern Circars, in return for a body of worthless cavalry; and the Dutch had inveigled him into a bargain, by which he would have accepted of a body of auxiliary troops, as an equivalent for ceding to them the whole province of Tinnevelly. Such are the mischiefs he would have done, and the enormous sacrifices he would have made, had not others prevented him; and it may well be made a question, whether his reputation has not gained more than it has suffered by the obstacles thrown in his way. If from his foreign we turn to his internal policy, he will be found entitled to more praise. Except in the case of the Rohillas, when the want of money tempted him to commit a great iniquity, he showed an anxious desire to protect the natives from oppression, and in his financial arrangements never forgot the necessity of providing for the security and comforts of the ryots. He also brought the public offices for the first time into some kind of order, and in the face of much opposition, both from his colleagues and the court of directors, instituted a regular system of statistical inquiry, for the purpose of furnishing information without which several subsequent reforms could not have been attempted. His labours in this way are not, however, either so extensive or so valuable as to deserve further notice. One of his best claims to the gratitude of posterity, is the encouragement he gave to the cultivation of oriental literature, by the patronage both of learned societies and individual authors.

On the whole, though reprobating the harsh measure which was dealt out to Mr. Hastings by the impeachment, and admitting his claims in a few instances to the gratitude, and in many instances to the forbearance of his country, we are unable, in estimating his services, to concur in the high eulogy pronounced upon them, both by his admirers and by himself. In his published work, entitled Memoirs relative to the State of India, he speaks of “the invariable success with which all the measures which were known to be of my own formation were attended;” of “the apparent magnitude and temerity attributed to some of those which proved most fortunate in their termination;” of “the wonderful support and gradual elevation which my personal character had derived during a long and progressive series of contingencies,” and then says, that “these and some other circumstances had altogether contributed to excite a degree of superstitious belief in the minds of almost all men who were situated within the sphere of my authority or influence, that the same success would crown all my future endeavours.” Had these words, the language, obviously, of inordinate vanity and not of truth and soberness, fallen from Mr. Hastings when so far advanced in years that a second childhood might have been suspected, it would have been unfair to quote them; but as he tells us himself that he penned them on the homeward voyage to England, they furnish a genuine specimen of the self-conceit which is known to have been one of his greatest failings. In this respect, and in several others, he suffers by contrast with Marquis Cornwallis. This nobleman was modest, candid, and straightforward; Mr. Hastings was vain, disingenuous, and equivocating. The one always meant what he said, and kept every promise he made; the other too often acted as if he had believed, like Talleyrand, that speech had been given to man to enable him to conceal his thoughts. Not only on ordinary occasions was he too much given to keep the promise to the ear and break it to the sense, but even in making solemn treaties with native powers, we find him at one time instructing a resident to throw in a vague article, and at another, telling his colleagues that he had purposely made a stipulation indefinite. In thus preferring the crooked to the straight path, he sometimes brought the Company into a position where they could not remain with safety, nor recede with honour. Indeed, on comparing the two administrations, we have no hesitation in giving the preference to that of Marquis Cornwallis. His war, unlike the Mahratta war of Mr. Hastings, was engaged in, only because it could not be avoided, and, being just, terminated as it deserved, in curbing a faithless despot, and giving the Company, in addition to a large extent of territory, a much improved frontier. His reforms, though by no means free from faults, were carried on, not by fits and starts, like those of Mr. Hastings, but on a regular and comprehensive plan, embracing almost every department of the public service. Last, and best of all, Marquis Cornwallis was both in theory and practice the declared enemy of all corruption, and never made an appointment without preferring the candidate whom he believed best qualified to perform the duties; whereas, under Mr. Hastings, and still more perhaps under his immediate successor, Sir John Macpherson, every kind of jobbery prevailed, and influential support from directors and proprietors was secured, first, by conferring profitable contracts on their relatives and friends, and then winking at the imperfect or fraudulent manner in which the stipulations contained in them were performed. The banishment of this shameless trafficking in bullock contracts, salt contracts, silk contracts, and opium contracts, introduced a new era in Indian administration, and made it tenfold purer than it had ever been before. Mr. Hastings, unfortunately, could not afford to bestow his patronage on the most deserving, because it was the great instrument on which he depended for confirming the wavering fidelity, and increasing the number of his supporters; Sir John Macpherson, partly for the same reason, and partly also, it may be, because corruption was congenial to his nature and his habits, seems to have dealt with his patronage as every trader does in the article in which he traffics, employing it wherever it promised to yield the quickest and best return; Marquis Cornwallis regarded it as a sacred trust, and when solicited, even by the heir-apparent to the British crown, returned the unvarying answer, that qualification was his only test, and that where it was wanting, it was impossible for him to make any appointment. All honour to him for his firmness, disinterestedness, and sterling honesty!