Page images
PDF
EPUB

fluctuates most surprisingly in twenty-four hours. After we had ascended the Ghauts, and were passing through a part of the Mysore country, we experienced this; for one day the thermometer in a tent stood in the middle of the day at 113° Fahrenheit, and at three in the following morning the same instrument in the same tent stood at 54°; in fact, one night I lay under a sheet, a thick blanket, a counterpane, and a boat-cloak, but could scarcely keep myself warm withal.

I have always considered the Mysore country not ill-adapted for English agricultural operations; the strongest impediment (might I say the only one?) is the continued dry weather; I do not say that this is an insuperable impediment, nor should I despair of being able to introduce into it the actual fourcourse system of English husbandry. This is the system which has brought English husbandry to its present excellent condition; a system introduced from Scotland. Now the question is, what is there to prevent this system from being introduced into the Mysore? I most firmly believe nothing! But there are several matters which would require time and experience to ascertain. The soil of many parts of Nottinghamshire, Northamptonshire, as also of some parts of Holland, Flanders, and France, in which excellent crops of turnip and rape are grown, is sandy and friable; this, however, is rendered more compact and closer by dressings of heavy straw manure from under folded cattle. The soil of the Mysore is of the same sandy nature, and might be modified by the same operation.

The climate of the Mysore is certainly not hostile to agricultural pursuits, as is evident by the rural population being addicted to them. Any person traversing the extent of France, from Calais to Geneva, who has been in the Mysore, will see very much in the former to remind him of the latter. It may not, perhaps, be feasible to carry out the English four-course system in kind, as turnips, barley, clover, wheat; but it may be very feasible to adopt it in the foundation principle of a green crop and a white crop alternately. The atmosphere of Mysore is, for a very considerable part of the year, cloudy; the mornings and evenings are cool, the nights dewy, and showers of rain are of not unfrequent occurrence in the dry season; these things are all greatly in favour of agricultural operations. There is something feudal in the general aspect of parts of Mysore. A pair of oxen yoked; a little primitive plough; grain fields being gathered in; the people inhabiting villages fortified by square mud walls, entered through gateways.

Few, if any, of the arts have been so stationary as agriculture, and among the manifold benefits conferred by England upon India, agricultural improvements have found no place; and yet the natives of many districts in India are decidedly a pastoral people, not only as feeders of flocks, but as tillers of the soil, combining the two pursuits which, in the persons of Cain and Abel, were separate. If an enlightened, adapted, and capitalized system of agriculture were introduced into India, it would make it one of the most flourishing and happy portions of the world; the now dormant energies of the people would be aroused, pestilential places would be purified by drainage and the removal of jungle, which, in its annual vegetative decay, produces so much malaria; supplies of the necessaries of life, now so often destructive to the population cut off by drought, would be secured by increased irrigation. It is a very common but a very false notion, that the means and appliances used in a country are those best adapted to its condition. Nations, no more than individuals, do not arrive at perfection, or even a best state, by instinct, or from necessity, which is the mother of invention, only so far as suits her own demands; she does not create for superfluity, or even for comfort. Mankind require something more than the satisfaction of their mere physical wants.

GLEIG'S "MEMOIRS OF WARREN HASTINGS."

FOURTH AND CONCLUDING ARTICLE.

We described, in the last article,* the embarrassing position of Mr. Hastings at the mercy of a majority of his council, apparently intent upon his ruin; deserted, or not supported, by his employers at home, who had pledged their "steady favour" to him, and doomed by the Minister of the Crown as a victim to his secret system of party policy. Roused, though not dismayed, at these signs of hostile combination, and conscious that, although honesty is a sure panoply, the man who trusts solely to the purity of his motives for defence against his enemies affords them undue advantages, Mr. Hastings determined to despatch to England three trust-worthy agents-Mr. George Elliott, son of Sir Gilbert Elliott, the Hon. James Stuart, son of the Earl of Bute, and Lieut.-Colonel MacLeane—“to watch over his honour rather than his interests." With these gentlemen, and especially the latter, he carried on a very confidential intercourse, of which copies are given by Mr. Gleig. The difficulties of his situation at length drove him to an incipient resolution of resigning, and he intimated that if the next advices showed that his measures were disapproved of in England, and there was an evident disinclination towards him, "leaving him nothing to hope," he would "quit the hateful scene before his enemies gained a complete triumph over him;" if, on the contrary, his conduct was commended, and there were clear symptoms in the Court of a proper disposition towards him, he then was prepared to await the issue. He left it to the direction of Col. MacLeane and of Mr. Graham (another agent), to whom alone he communicated his intention, "to make such use of it as they thought proper." This intimation is contained in a letter dated 25th March, 1775. The subsequent transactions at Calcutta, however, and especially the conduct of the Council in regard to Nuncomar, changed his determination, and in the postscript to a letter addressed to both the gentlemen just named, dated 18th May, Mr. Hastings says: "I now retract the resolution communicated to you separately in my letters of the 27th March. Whatever advices the first packet may bring, I am now resolved to see the issue of my appeal, believing it impossible that men whose actions are so frantic can be permitted to remain in charge of so important a trust." As this circumstance has been made the ground of a heavy charge of dishonourable conduct against the Governor-General, it is necessary to notice the date of the retractation, and the reasons assigned for it.

It appears that Col. MacLeane arrived in England in the winter of 1775, and commenced an active agency on behalf of Mr. Hastings. He found the Minister (Lord North) intent upon obtaining from the Court of Directors a formal application to the Crown for the removal of Mr. Hastings and his colleague Mr. Barwell, with the design of placing General Clavering at the head of the Bengal Government, partly to conciliate that person's powerful parliamentary connections, but with a deeper design, that

* See page 22.

Asiat.Journ.N.S.VOL.35.No.140.

2 D

66 a

of so embroiling affairs by his reckless management as to furnish imperative reasons for the transfer of the Indian administration exclusively to the Crown. "The fact is," writes Col. MacLeane (25th June, 1776), plan is formed for reducing the Company to the simple transactions of commerce, and for taking possession of all its territorial rights and acquisitions." This statement seems to rest upon what occurred at an interview between the writer and Lord North. With this view, the Proprietors were tampered with, calumnies were circulated against Mr. Hastings, and it was at length proposed, as a matter of expediency, that he should be recalled. On a ballot, however, there was a majority against the recall.

Previous to this result, Col. MacLeane, not knowing what the issue might be, threw out a proposition that, although Mr. Hastings would not relinquish his post, without violence, whilst any attempt was made to dishonour him, he had no desire to retain it for the sake of emolument; and upon being asked how an accommodation could be arranged that would content both parties, he suggested that some honour from the Crown should be conferred upon Mr. Hastings, who would then give way, and all hostility might cease; adding, that he had power to agree to such arrangement. When the attempt to displace him failed, the Minister fell back upon this proposal, and made overtures to Col. MacLeane for a compromise, on the condition of Mr. Hastings' resignation. The agent, however, felt that he was now, since the acquittal, in a superior position, and had ground for asking better terms; he also apprehended that the censorious would construe the grant of an honour to Mr. Hastings into a bribe for relinquishing his post. We confess this objection appears to us utterly without force. A compromise of this kind after acquittal would have been infinitely less suspicious than before. The negotiations, however, went on, but in a very secret and suspicious manner, the supersession of Sir Elijah Impey being incidentally mixed up in a way that alarmed the jealousy of Col. MacLeane and Mr. Elliott, Mr. Hastings' agents. Meanwhile, hostilities were secretly preparing in the Direction; and at length, fearful of the consequences of holding off, the agents consented to the following terms of compromise, relinquishing the claim for "honours," to which it was understood there was some impediment :-that the persons displaced on account of attachment to Mr. Hastings should be restored; that his friends should receive promotion and favour adequate to their rank and merit; that all retrospect and prosecution prior to the Regulation Act should be abandoned; and "that Mr. Hastings should be well received on his return, a vote of thanks promoted if moved for, and nobody to be displaced." This agreement, which was negotiated between the agents and Mr. Robinson, Lord North's secretary, was to be kept a profound secret, "lest opposition should get hold of it,” and "ostensible answers" were to be put opposite to each head of the articles, which were in writing. To carry this secret agreement into effect, it was necessary that Mr. Hastings' resignation should be tendered. Col. MacLeane here felt a difficulty about assigning the reason for his wish to resign. Mr. Robinson relieved him by drawing up a letter, assigning,

as the motive, a desire on the part of Mr. Hastings to promote unanimity in the Supreme Council of Bengal, and heal the unhappy divisions there, which obstructed the establishment of a permanent system of Government, and precluded the prospect of such an union as would promote the welfare of the Company. The Court wished to be satisfied that the agent had proper authority to make this tender, and Col. MacLeane disclosed to three of the Directors, in confidence, the two letters of the Governor-General.

Hitherto, the manner in which Col. MacLeane managed this transaction has been viewed with suspicion, and Mr. Wilson, in his notes upon Mill, regards him as acting for himself, rather than for his principal, observing, that "the whole of his proceedings display an intriguing spirit, which was very likely to have made him outstrip his instructions, in the hope of concilating the ruling party of the Court." The letters in the work before us do not authorize any doubt of his perfect sincerity.

Although the terms thus secured to Mr. Hastings were not such as he was entitled to, stipulating, in fact, nothing for himself, still they afforded him the opportunity of retiring from a painful and embarrassing position without a stigma upon his conduct or motives. But the resignation being tendered, the Minister instantly resorted to an act of duplicity, if not of treachery, which neutralized the conditions stipulated for, and virtually stamped Mr. Hastings with obloquy. The honours, which were refused to him, were ostentatiously obtruded upon his enemy, and General Clavering, placed at the head of the Bengal Government, was immediately gazetted a knight of the Bath, Mr. Wheler, another antagonist, being appointed to the vacant place in the Council. Messrs. MacLeane and Stewart wrote immediately (13th November) to their principal, jointly declaring: "We cannot but regard this as a breach of, or at least a gross deviation from, the spirit of the compromise, and we deem you at full liberty, on that ground, to delay your resignation till you have authentic accounts from England of some equivalent honour being bestowed on you, capable of counterbalancing its pernicious effects in the eyes of all the world."

Meanwhile, the Governor-General was powerless, except in preventing, by his judicious mediation, an open collision between the Supreme Court and the Council, until the death of Col. Monson, in September 1776, which, as he writes to Lord North, "restored to him the constitutional authority of his station." Looking forward to the future, Hastings again evinced the firmness and determination of his character, and that his intention to resign was only a transient sentiment. "If a friend of Clavering's

is sent out," he writes to Mr. Graham, "to re-inforce his party, I must in that case either quit the field, or resolve to remain and have a new warfare, perhaps more violent than the last, to encounter. The first is a wretched expedient, which I will never submit to. Having gone through two years of persecution, I am determined now, that no less authority than the King's express act shall remove me, or death." He had now nothing to embarrass him upon the spot but the protests of his refractory councillors, of which he took no heed; but, aware that all his measures were liable to revision at

home by secret as well as open enemies, he was but ill at ease, and his letters indicate, not despondency (as Mr. Gleig alleges), but a doubt whether the reasonableness of his policy would justify it against such disadvantageous criticism.

The removal of the restraint upon his power, which an adverse majority imposed, gave scope to the energy of Mr. Hastings' views of Indian policy, which were "to extend the influence of the British nation to every part of India not too remote from its possessions, without enlarging the circle of their defence, or involving them in hazardous or indefinite engagements, and to accept of the allegiance of such neighbours as should sue to be enlisted among the friends and allies of the King of Great Britain." It is very evident that his aim was to establish a connection between the Indian states and the King's Government, "to extend the influence of the King's name" amongst them-in short, to do that by regular and constitutional means, which the Minister sought to effect by stratagem and for corrupt purposes. Mr. Hastings' confidential letters, upon these delicate subjects, are pregnant with sagacity, and manifest very comprehensive views, the result of sound political knowledge of the relations betwixt India and England. A letter to Mr. Elliott, 10th February, 1777, in particular, developes schemes of administration which show a far-seeing mind.

These agreeable visions were, however, interrupted by the arrival (19th June, 1777) of official advices of the resignation of Mr. Hastings, the appointment of General Clavering in his place, and of Mr. Wheler to fill the vacancy, and the announcement of a distinguished mark of royal approbation conferred upon Sir John Clavering. The reader is probably familiar with the picture of the "scene of confusion" consequent upon this event, exhibited in the work of Mr. Mill and other historians. We have now the details fresh from Mr. Hastings' own pen. The "mysterious packet" was opened in Council; it announced that Mr. MacLeane had expressed Mr. Hastings' wish to resign; and that the resignation had been accepted. The next day, the general issued a summons in his own name, as GovernorGeneral, for an extraordinary Council, to receive from his predecessor formal charge of the government, the keys of the fort and treasuries, &c. The general, upon that occasion, took the oaths, and proceeded to preside at the Board. Mr. Hastings had now a difficult and most responsible part to take. He requested the judges to meet him and give him their opinion, promising, if they decided, upon inspection of the papers, that any act of his had passed from whence his actual resignation could be deduced, immediately to vacate the chair. But the general had got the despatches, and refused to deliver them up. At length, the two councillors, Clavering and Francis, sitting as a complete Council, issuing orders and passing resolutions, consented, not to abide by the determination of the judges, but to suspend their orders till they had given their opinion. The judges were decidedly and unanimously of opinion, that an assumption of the chair by General Clavering would be illegal, and Clavering and Francis agreed to acquiesce in their judgment. The Board then met regularly, and the majo

« PreviousContinue »