In military expense, defrayed by the Nabob of Oude, was 20,7661. * CHAP. I. 1774. Upon this statement, if we compare the year in which Mr. Hastings began his administration, with that in which it ended, we see a prodigious deterioration. If we compare it even with that which follows, the total amount of debt in. 1774. BOOK V. 1772 was 160,30,000 rupees; in 1775 it was 177,68,584, which is an increase of 17,41,455. The only improvement appears in the balance of cash, which in 1775 exceeded the balance in 1772 by 58,86,557. Deducting from this a sum equal to the increase of debt, there remains 41,45,102, by which alone the state of the exchequer, after all the calamity which had been produced to supply it, was better in 1775 than it had been in 1772. CHAP. II. Commencement of the New Government-Supreme Council divided into two Parties, of which that of the Governor-General in the Minority-Presi dency of Bombay espouse the Cause of Ragoba, an ejected Peshwa-Supreme Council condemn this Policy, and make Peace with his Opponents -Situation of Powers in the Upper Country, Nabob of Oude, Emperor, and Nujeef Khan-Pecuniary Corruption, in which Governor-General seemed to be implicated, in the cases of the Ranee of Burdwan, Phousdar of Hoogly, and Munny Begum-Governor-General resists Inquiry-Nuncomar the great Accuser-He is prosecuted by Governor-General-Accused of Forgery, found guilty, and hanged-Mahomed Reza Khan, and the office of Naib Subah restored. new counsellors: Views with which they and THE operation of the new constitution framed by the parliament of England, CHAP. II. was ordained to commence in India after the 1st of August, 1774. The new 1774. counsellors, however, General Clavering, Mr. Monson, and Mr. Francis, who, Arrival of the along with Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell, were elected to compose the board of administration, did not arrive at Calcutta until the 19th of October. On the following day the existing government was dissolved by proclamation, and Hastings met. the new council took possession of its powers. On the proposal of the GovernorGeneral, who stated the necessity of a few days, to prepare for the council a view of the existing state of affairs, and to enable Mr. Barwell, who was then absent, to arrive; the meeting of the Board was suspended until the 25th. On the very day on which its deliberations began, some of the discord made its appearance, which so long and so deeply embarrassed and disgraced the government of India. The party who had arrived from England, and the party in India, with whom they were conjoined, met not, it would seem, with minds in the happiest frame for conjunct operations. Mr. Hastings, upon the first appearance of his colleagues, behaved, or was suspected of behaving, coldly. And with jealous feelings this coldness was construed into studied and humiliating neglect. In the representation which the Governor-General presented of the political state of the country, the war against the Rohillas necessarily refusal of Hastings to The Rohilla 1774. respondence of the new BOOK V. attracted the principal attention of the new counsellors; and, unhappily for the Governor-General, presented too many appearances of a doubtful complexion not communicate to excite the desire of elucidation in the minds of the most candid judges. An part of his cor- obvious objection was, its direct opposition to the frequent and urgent commands with the agent of the Court of Directors, not to engage in offensive wars of any description, at Oude, fix the attention and to confine the line of defensive operations to the territorial limits of themCouncillors. selves and allies. The reasons, too, upon which the war was grounded; a dispute about the payment of an inconsiderable sum of money, and the benefit of conquest, to which that dispute afforded the only pretext; "might well appear a suspicious foundation. When the new government began the exercise of its authority, the intelligence had not arrived of the treaty with Fyzoolla Khan; and an existing war appeared to demand its earliest determinations. To throw light upon the field of deliberation, the new Councillors required that the correspondence should be laid before them, which had passed between the GovernorGeneral (such is the title by which the President was now distinguished), and the two functionaries, the commander of the troops, and the agent residing with the Vizir. And when they were informed that à part indeed of this correspondence should be submitted to their inspection, but that a part of it would also be withheld, their surprise and dissatisfaction were loudly testified, their indignation and suspicions but little concealed. Reasons of As reasons for suppressing a part of the letters Mr. Hastings alleged, that Mr. Hastings they related not to public business, that they were private, confidential comfor suppressing the corremunications, and not fit to become public. spondence. It is plain that this declaration could satisfy none but men who had the most unbounded confidence in the probity and wisdom of Mr. Hastings; and as the new Councillors neither had that confidence, nor had been in circumstances in which they could possibly have acquired it on satisfactory grounds, they were not only justified in demanding, but their duty called upon them to demand a full disclosure. The pretension erected by Mr. Hastings, if extended into a general rule, would destroy one great source of the evidence by which the guilt of public men can be proved: And it was calculated to rouse a suspicion of his improbity in any breast not fortified against it by the strongest evidence of his habitual virtue.*. Nothing could be more unfortunate for Mr. Hastings than * The Directors not only condemned the retention of the correspondence, and sent repeated orders for its disclosure, which were never obeyed; but arraigned the very principle of a private agent. "The conduct of our late Council," say they, " in empowering the President to prepare instructions for Mr. Middleton as agent at the court of Sujah Dowla, without ordering them to be 1774. his war against the Rohillas, and the suppression of his correspondence with Mr. CHAP. II. Middleton. The first branded the spirit of his administration with a mark, which its many virtues were never able to obliterate, of cruel and unprincipled aggression; and the second stained him with a natural suspicion of personal impurity. Both together gave his rivals those advantages over him which rendered his subsequent administration a source of contention and misery, and involved him in so great a storm of difficulties and dangers at its close. cillors form an the Governor hence, the part, of the troops. Of the Council, now composed of five Members, the three who had recently The new Councome from England joined together in opposing the Governor-General, who was opposition to supported by Mr. Barwell alone. This party constituted, therefore, a majority General, and a of the Council, and the powers of government passed in consequence into their majority, hands. The precipitation of their measures called for, and justified the animad- governing versions of their opponents. Having protested against the suppression of any Council. part of Middleton's correspondence, they were not contented with commanding Orders, harsh that, as at least a temporary expedient, his letters should be wholly addressed to with respect to the Vizir, for themselves; they voted his immediate recall; though Hastings declared that receiving such a measure would dangerously proclaim to the natives the distractions of money from him, and with the government, and confound the imagination of the Vizir, who had no con- drawing the ception of power except in the head of the government, and who would consider the annihilation of that power as a revolution in the state. The governing party, notwithstanding their persuasion of the injustice and cruelty of the Rohilla war, and notwithstanding their ignorance whether or not it was brought to a close, directed the Commander-in-Chief, in the first place, immediately upon the receipt of their letter, to demand payment from the Vizir of the forty lacs of rupees promised for the extirpation of the Rohillas,* and of all other sums submitted to the Board for their inspection and approbation, was very improper. And it is our express direction, that no such independent or separate authority be ever delegated, to any Governor, or Member of Council, or to any other person whatsoever; but that all instructions to public agents be laid before the Council, and signed by a majority of the Members, before they be carried into execution." Letter to Bengal, 15th December, 1775, Fifth Report, ut supra, Appendix, No. 46. * On the supposition of the injustice of the Rohilla war, these forty lacs ought to have been paid not to the Company, but to the sufferers: Sujah Dowla ought to have been compelled to restore the unhappy refugees to their homes; and to make compensation. But neither the party, who now possessed all the powers of government, though they reprobated the Rohilla war, nor the Court of Directors, though they solemnly condemned it, ever uttered a wish for the restoration of the expatriated and plundered Rohillas; for a farthing of compensation for their loss, or alleviation to their miseries, either out of their own revenues, or those of the Vizir. The cry about justice, therefore, was a cheap virtue to them; and they were so much the less excusable |