12 MARCH 1910, Page 25

WARREN HASTINGS.* "LET this business end as it will," wrote

Hastings at the time of his impeachment, " a great portion of mankind will think they judge with candour, if, unable to comprehend any part of the accusations, they acquit me, at a guess, of some, and conclude that where so much is alleged against me, much of it must be necessarily true." The prophecy has been justified by the event, for in the popular view Hastings still is, and will probably long remain, a man of mixed motives and doubtful honesty, whose brilliant services can hardly be balanced against his unscrupulousness and hardness of heart. Mr. Forrest, indeed, believes that " the drift of opinion" has changed during the last twenty years, and that "the load of obloquy resting on Hastings' memory has in a large degree been removed." But the facts speak differently. Only the other day there appeared, with all the pomp of academic authority, a review of Hastings's administration in which the old calumnies of Burke and Mill, duly watered down for modern palates, were once more presented to the pubic. Error is always long-lived, and in the case of Hastings it is only natural that it should be, for nothing approaching a true, accurate, and exhaustive account of his work has ever been written. For some mysterious reason, one of the most enthral- ling and stupendous interludes in English history has been left

Selections from the State Papers of the Governors-General of India. Edited by G. W. Forrest, C.I.E. With Portraits and Maps. Vols. I. and II. "Warren Hastings." Oxford: B. H. Blackwell. London: A. Constable and Co. (21s. net.]

untouched by English historians. The current biographies of Hastings are totally unscientific, and—if we except one or two valuable monographs on special points in his career, together with Mr. Forrest's publications—it may be said with truth that the whole enormous mass of deeply interesting material bearing upon his administration still remains to be explored. To Mr. Forrest every student of Indian history is indebted for the excellent series of Selections published by him in 1892 from the Minutes of the Supreme Council in Bengal during the period of Hastings's rule. His present volumes contain a reprint of some important and little-known tracts and State Papers by Hastings, preceded by an intro- duction containing an account of the principal events of the Governor-Generalship. This introduction, which is an enlarged and revised version of the preface to the Selections of 1892, and now occupies an entire volume, is of unequal merit. In its original form, as a commentary upon specific documents, it was an illuminating and judicious piece of work ; as it stands at present, in the shape of an independent historical essay, it is less satisfactory. The low standard of efficiency prevalent in works on Indian history is exemplified by Mr. Forrest's list of authorities. The reader is referred airily to the " original records" ; but it is clear enough that this phrase must not be taken to include the immense official and private correspondence of Hastings at the British Museum,—a source which Mr. Forrest has left untapped. An examination of these manuscripts would, no doubt, have carried him beyond the limits of the present work, but un- fortunately a similar lack of thoroughness marks his treat- ment of some of the moat important printed materials. It is curious to note, for instance, that Mr. Forrest relies for his knowledge of the actual proceedings at the impeachment upon Debrett's History of the Trial,—a single octavo volume summarising as beet it may the nine gigantic folios contain- ing the original evidence. What would be said of a biographer of Wellington whose acquaintance with the Despatches was limited to what he had gathered of them from some boiled- down abstract? Or of an historian of French society under Louis XIV. who was content to read Saint-Simon's Memoirs in a summary of a few hundred pages ? In the domain of Indian history alone are methods of this kind freely adopted, not only by the small fry of amateurs and book-makers, but by serious writers of knowledge and repute like Mr. Forrest. The result in the present instance is a book which is excellent wherever it is based on the previous researches of Mr. Forrest himself, or of other writers, but which elsewhere is of disappointingly little value.

The peculiarly dramatic nature of Hastings's career was the result in a large measure of the important part played in it by the personal element. This fact has indeed done much to obscure a tree comprehension of his work; for historians, from Macaulay onwards, have been usually more concerned with the glowing colours and vivid contrasts of Indian per- sonalities than with the great movements of peoples and policies. Hastings was a statesman in the highest sense of the word. His final achievement can only be measured in the wide regions of administration, of foreign policy, of finance,—in the destinies, not of a few individuals, but of vast numbers of men. Yet it is true that the actual course of his life's work depended in a remarkable degree upon the accidents of personal character, and thus for a proper under- standing of that work a correct view of the quarrels and intrigues which surrounded him is highly important. Mr. Forrest's most valuable contribution to the biography of Hastings lies in this direction. The ceaseless, deadly, almost fiendish, animosity of Philip Francis was the determining factor in the greater part of Hastings's career; its influence may be traced in every branch of his administration; and without it, in all probability, the great impeachment would never have taken place. In the extraordinary struggle between these mighty protagonists, the phase which has been especially illuminated by Mr. Forrest is the penultimate one,—that which immediately preceded Francis's departure from India, and left Hastings, for the moment at least, the uncontrolled master of Bengal. The circumstances which led up to the famous duel are known tons almost entirely through the minutes of the Bengal Council, and Mr. Forrest's examina- tion of these enthralling records leaves nothing to be desired. His commentary and verdict may be taken as conclusive, and his narrative of the facts is admirably lucid. The dispute which precipitated the final catastrophe arose owing to the singular constitution of the Supreme Council. By his casting vote Hastings controlled the situation, until the departure of his adherent, Barwell, threatened to throw the power into Francis's hands. Barwell, however, only returned to England on the definite understanding that Francis would not use this opportunity to interfere with Hastings's conduct of the Mahratta War. But when Barwell was once out of India Francis explained away his promises, opposed the prosecution of the war, and bade fare to destroy the masterly combinations of Hastings. That the conduct of Francis was inexcusable is now beyond a doubt. " No impartial judge," says Mr. Forrest, " can read the minutes of the two men without coming to the conclusion that Francis was guilty of a gross breach of faith." To Hastings the safety of the British in India depended upon the defeat of the Mahrattas, and he was determined to secure that or perish in the attempt. Hence his celebrated minute accusing his enemy of personal treachery :-- " I judge of his public conduct by my experience of his private, which I have found to be void of truth and honour. This is a severe charge, but temperately and deliberately made, from the firm persuasion that I owe this justice to the public and to myself, as the only redress to both, for artifices of which I have been a victim, and which threaten to involve their interests with disgrace and ruin: The only redress for a fraud for which the law has made no provisions is the exposure of it."

The duel followed, and the singular spectacle was presented of the Governor-General of India and the Senior Member of Council exchanging pistol•shots. It can hardly be doubted, however, that in the desperate position in which he was placed Hastings was justified in pushing matters to this extremity. His death would hardly have increased the difficulties of the situation ; and, as the affair turned out, the issue was pre- cisely that which was most favourable to his policy. Francis was wounded ; in his absence Hastings was able to push forward the attack on the Mahrattas ; and when Francis, ill and shattered, returned at last to the Council, he seemed to have lost heart. He made one or two ineffectual struggles, and then left India for ever.

Much less satisfactory is Mr. Forrest's treatment of another incident of Hastings's rule—perhaps the most famous of all— the affair of the Begnms of Ondh. Here we feel at once the absence of an adequate body of data behind his account. Much of the most important material for forming a true judgment on this question is to be found outside the minutes of the Bengal Council, in the parole evidence given at the impeachment, for instance, and in Hastings's private corre- spondence, neither of which appears to have been examined by Mr. Forrest ; while the great mass of evidence contained in the affidavits printed by Hastings in the appendix to his Narrative of the Insurrection at Benares unfortunately finds no place in these volumes, though the Narrative itself is given us. It is in the bulk, the variety, and the unimpeachable genuineness of the statements made in the affidavits that the proof lies of the Begums' complicity in a rebellion of which the declared object was to root the English out of India. Mr. Forrest quotes a few extracts in his introduction, but that is not enough ; it is the quantity and the consistency of the evidence that are really convincing. But it is not only in matters of detail that Mr. Forrest's exposition might be improved upon; his whole view of the incident lacks breadth and proportion. The problem which Hastings had to face in connexion with the Begums was not merely a financial problem, as Mr. Forrest, together with most of Hastings's biographers, leads us to believe ; it was not merely a question of the relief of the Company's monetary embarrassments ; it was part of a much larger difficulty, a difficulty involving the whole principle of our relations with the great province of Oudh. Oudh was a powerful State, dependent, in effect, upon the English Company, and at the same time a " buffer" between Bengal and the turbulent forces upon its north-west frontier. What was to be the attitude of the English towards this principality P The policy of Francis had been deliberately to undermine the power of the Vizier of Oudh, to reduce his government to impotence, and thus to assure the supremacy of the Company beyond the shadow of a doubt. The policy of Hastings was the exact contrary ; he wished for a strong, united, efficient government in Oudh, and his conduct towards the Begums was a necessary part of this policy. The Begums—the Vizier's mother and grandmother— threatened to overturn his rule, and at a critical moment all but succeeded. So long as their power existed good government in Oudh was an impossibility; and Hastings by insisting upon the Vizier's, depriving them not only of their vast domains, but of the treasures of the State upon which they had seized, was merely carrying out a consistent and admirable line of policy. In order to carry it out it was necessary to use violence—the country, we must remember, was virtually in a condition of civil war—and violence Hastings did not hesitate to use. The precise nature of the pressure put upon the Begums' Ministers to surrender the treasures is doubtful to this day. It is certain that they were severely manacled, it is certain they were threatened with corporal punishment ; more than this is unknown. Mr. Forrest, believing it necessary to excuse Hastings, tells us that "for what took place " he " at Calcutta cannot be held responsible." But there can be no doubt that Hastings himself would have been the first to repudiate such a defence. Indeed, it is certain that if he had been on the spot far severer measures would have been employed. In an unpublished letter to Impey he advocates the summary execution of the Begums' Ministers,—the two eunuchs who had been the principal contrivers of the confusion in Oudh. The vindication and maintenance of the authority of the Vizier was his dominating motive, and it was not until this end had been accomplished that he relaxed his bold upon the centre of disaffection. The fact that this policy involved the liquidation of a large debt to the Company was an addi- tional point in its favour, but the mainspring of Hastings's action lay elsewhere. Unfortunately the true bearings of the incident have been fatally obscured by the rhetoric of Burke and Sheridan. Hastings's enemies ever since have assumed that he was aetuated solely by a desire for plunder, and his friends that he was actuated solely by a desire to restore order to the finances of the Company. In reality his aim was far wider. In this case, as in so many others, he has been blamed or excused for a line of conduct the true meaning of which has never been properly understood. His severities towards the Begums' Ministers were the necessary result of his determination to secure peace and order to a vast number of human beings, and it is to his honour that, having the intelligence to understand what his duty was, he possessed no less the courage to perform it.