1785. Book V. equally oppressed; and the humiliation of their remonstrances shows them to be equally hopeless of any redress but in the mercy of their oppressors." Orders were dispatched to Madras for the restoration of his revenues to the Nabob; of which the sixth part, which he had reserved to himself, as requisite for the maintenance of his family and dignity, had been exactly paid; and in reality yielded to him more money for his private purposes, than he had ever before enjoyed. It curiously happened, that, before the orders of the Supreme Council arrived at Madras, dispatches were received from the Court of Directors, which conveyed their approbation of the assignment, and commanded the assistance of the Bengal government to render it effectual; dispatches which, at the same time, contained, the condemnation of the transaction by which Mr. Sullivan was appointed an agent of the Supreme Council at the residence of the Nabob, and a declaration that the only organ of communication with Mahomed Ali was the Governor and Council of Madras. Upon this communication from the Court of Directors, the Governor and Council applied to the Supreme Council for the assistance which they were commanded to yield. After a hesitation of a few months, the Supreme Council resolved to disobey: And, informing the Governor and Council of Madras, that they assumed the right of judging for themselves, they repeated their orders of the 13th of January, and commanded the surrender of the assignment. Macartney refuses to obey. The consequences of obedience appeared to Lord Macartney of the most alarming description. The pay of the Madras army was at that moment seven months in arrear: from the resources of Carnatic alone was any supply to be obtained: not a single pagoda, since the death of Sir Eyre Coote, had been sent from Bengal: if the assignment was given up, the slender produce of the Circars which Mr. Hastings would have sacrificed would alone have remained: and neither the native, nor European troops, could be expected to bear any addition to the privations which they now endured. With a prospect of the actual dissolution of the government, if the revenues, on which every thing depended, were at so extraordinary a moment given up; and fully impressed with the conviction, that to surrender them to the Nabob was to render them unavailing to the defence of the country, defence which then fell upon the Company without House of Commons on the 13th of March, 1786. For the opinion which Mr. Hastings entertained of the mischievous character of the Nabob, and of the intrigues of which he was at once the cause and the dupe, entertained as long as since the period when he was second in council at Madras; see the records of that Presidency in Rous's Appendix, p. 682*, 688*, 704, 717, 718, 729. 1785. any resources, and oppressed them with a burden which they were unable to CHAP. VIII. bear, he resolved to maintain the assignment, which, at the close of the second year, had yielded one million sterling from those very countries, which for eighteen months after the invasion of Hyder Ali had not contributed a pagoda toward the expenses of the war. With this disobedience, Mr. Hastings, whose administration was now so formidably assailed in England, and who was deeply concerned in the success with which he might perform the business of winding it up, found, either not leisure, or not inclination, to enter into contest.* After the unreserved exhibition, which I have accounted it my duty to make, of the evidence which came before me of the errors and vices of Mr. Hastings's administration, it is necessary, for the satisfaction of my own mind, and to save me from the fear of having given a more unfavourable conception than I intended of his character and conduct, to impress upon the reader the obligation of considering two things. The first is, that Mr. Hastings was placed in difficulties, and acted upon by temptations, such as few public men have been called upon to overcome: And of this the preceding history affords abundance of proof. The second is, that of no man, probably, who ever had a great share in the government of the world, was the public conduct so completely explored, and laid open to view. For the mode of transacting the business of the Company, almost wholly by writing; first, by written consultations in the Council; secondly, by written commands on the part of the Directors, and written statements of all that was done on the part of their servants in India; afforded a body of evidence, such as under no other government ever did or could exist: And this evidence was brought forward, with a completeness never before exemplified, first by the contentions of a powerful party in the Council in India; next by the inquiries of two searching committees of the House of Commons; in the third place by the production of almost every paper which could be supposed to throw light upon his conduct, during the discussions upon the proceedings relative to his impeachment in the House of Commons; lastly, by the production of papers upon the trial: all this elucidated and commented upon by the keenest spirits of the age; and for a long time without any interposition of power to screen his offences from detection. It will, probably, be found that evidence so complete never was brought to bear upon the public conduct of any great public actor before. And it is my firm conviction, that if we had the * Papers presented to the House of Commons, pursuant to their orders of the 9th of February, 1803, regarding the affairs of the Carnatic, vol. ii.; Barrow's Life of Lord Macartney, i. 238 -280. 1785. BOOK V. advantage of viewing the conduct of other men, who have been as much engaged in the conduct of public affairs, as completely naked, and stripped of all its disguises, as his, few of them would be found, whose character would present a higher claim to indulgence, in some respects, I think, even to applause. In point of ability, he is beyond all question the most eminent of the chief rulers whom the Company have ever employed; nor is there any one of them, who would not have succumbed, under the difficulties which, if he did not overcome, he at any rate sustained. He had no genius, any more than Clive, for schemes of policy including large views of the past, and large anticipations of the future; but he was hardly ever excelled in the skill of applying temporary expedients to temporary difficulties; in putting off the evil day; and in giving a fair complexion to the present one. He had not the forward and imposing audacity of Clive; but he had a calm firmness, which usually, by its constancy, wore out all resistance. He was the first, or among the first of the servants of the Company, who attempted to acquire any language of the natives, and who set on foot those liberal inquiries into the literature and institutions of the Hindus, which have led to the satisfactory knowledge of the present day. He had that great art of a ruler, which consists in attaching to the Governor those who are governed; for most assuredly his administration was popular, both with his countrymen and the natives, in Bengal. CHAP. IX. Legislative Proceedings from 1773 to 1780-Renewal of the Charter- 1773 to 1780. IT is now time to inquire into the proceedings to which the affairs of India had CHAP. IX. given birth in England since the last great legislative interference. From the 1780. year 1767 till the year 1773, the East India Company was bound to pay to the Legislative proceedings in public yearly the sum of 400,000l., "in respect of the territorial acquisitions and relation to revenues lately obtained in the East Indies." But in the But in the year 1773, the financial India from embarrassments of the Company became so great, that they were obliged to solicit, and received, a loan from the public of 1,400,000l. At that time it was represented, "That, in the then circumstances of the East India Company, it would not be in their power to provide for the repayment of such loan, and for the establishing their affairs upon a more secure foundation for the time to come, unless the public should agree to forego, for the present, all participation in the profits arising from the territorial acquisitions and revenues lately obtained in the East Indies." * It was, accordingly, at that time enacted, that it should not be lawful to make a dividend of more than six per cent. per annum on the Company's capital stock, till that loan was repaid; and that the whole of their surplus profits should be applied to its liquidation: that after the loan of 1,400,000%. should be repaid, it should not be lawful to make a dividend of more than seven per cent. per annum, upon the capital stock, until by the application of the whole of their surplus profits, their bond debt should be reduced to the sum of 1,500,000. In the year 1779, the loan being repaid, and the debt reduced according to the terms of the preceding ordinance, an act was passed, to be in force for one year, permitting a dividend of eight per cent. for that year, and reserving the surplus profits for the future disposal of the legislature. In the year 1780, another act was passed for one year also, containing precisely the same enactments as that of the preceding year. Such are the words of the preamble of the act 21 Geo. III. c. 65.. Book V. 1781. Discussions relative to a renewal of the charter. As the exclusive privileges were to expire upon three years notice after the 25th of March, 1780, it was now high time to treat about a renewal of the charter; and accordingly during the latter part of that year, and the beginning of 1781, much negotiation took place between the Treasury and the East India House. In parliament, the business was of very difficult handling. The contests between the Supreme Council and Supreme Court, which were represented as actually opposing one another with an armed force, had given occasion to petitions from the British subjects in India, from the Governor-General and Council, and from the East India Company; and had made a deep impression upon the public mind: The complaints and representations of Mr. Francis, taken up warmly by a powerful party in the legislative assembly, had filled the nation with ideas of injustice and other crimes on the part of Mr. Hastings: Intelligence had been received of the irruption of Hyder Ali into Carnatic, with the strongest representations of the misconduct of those agents under whom so much calamity had arrived: And strong fears were excited, that the ruin of the English interests, in that part of the world, was at hand. The points were two, upon which the views of the minister and the Company found it difficult to concur; The right to the territory; and the remuneration due to the public for the advantages which the East India Company were allowed to enjoy. According to the minister, the right of the crown to all territory acquired by subjects, was a matter of established law: The Company were at this time sufficiently bold to assert, that the Indian territory which they had acquired belonged of right to themselves. On the other point, the only question was, what proportion of the proceeds from the Indian territory, the East India Company should be made to give up to the nation. Lord North was now tottering on the ministerial throne: The East India Company were, therefore, encouraged to greater boldness, in standing out for favourable terms: And they declined to bring forward a petition for a renewal of the charter, on those terms to which the minister desired to reduce them. On the 9th of April, 1781, he represented, that "though he did not then intend to state any specific proposition relative to the future management of the Company's affairs, still he held it to be his duty to state to the House some points, that would be very proper for them to consider, before they should proceed to vote: First, the propriety of making the Company account with the public for three-fourths of all the net profits above eight per cent. for dividend; Secondly, of granting a renewal of the charter for an exclusive trade for a short, rather than a long term; Thirdly, of giving a greater degree of power than had been hitherto enjoyed, to |