LORD HASTINGS IN INDIA.* WZATEVER may be our opinion as
to the share taken by Lord Hastings himself in the events of the history of India from 1813 to 1822, however much of the increase of British influence and Native peace and prosperity, to Which his administration led, may be ascribed to fortune or to the influence of others, there can be no doubt that these years were a critical turning-point in the history of our Indian Empire. Major Ross-of-Bladensburg has told the story of Lord Hastings' administration extremely well and clearly ; and his brief but very interesting sketch of the personality of his hero will, on the whole, dispose his readers * Milan of Incite: the Marquess of Hastings, K.G. By Major Roes-of- Bladensburg, 0.B, Oxford: Clarendon Prem. 1893. to accept his own:conclusion, that Hastings was not only a successful man but an able and a remarkable man. There was no doubt in him a strain of vanity and conceit, which may well account for the attempted disparagement of his memory in some quarters. His published letter—as Lord Moira—in 1797, immortalised by the Anti-Tacobin, in which be proposed to become Prime Minister to the exclusion of Pitt and Fox, intimating that he should by doing so be meeting the wishes of a large number of Members of Parliament, revealed a degree of vanity and a lack of the sense of the ridiculous strange in a man not only of real talent but in many ways of good sense. Lord Cornwallis, under whom Moira had served in the Army with courage and distinction, wrote of this strange performance :— "It is surely impossible that Lord Moira's letter can be genuine ; if it is, excess of vanity and self-importance must have extinguished every spark of understanding, and I am sure there was a time when he had sense."
The "Ode to Lord M—ra," which appeared in the Anti- Tacobin, winds up as follows :— " Old P—Itn—y, too, your influence feels, And asks from you th' Exchequer seals
To tax and save the nation. T—ke trembles lest your potent charms Should lure C—s F—x from his fond arms To YOUR administration."
That Hastings could make himself supremely ridiculous on this occasion was no proof, however, that he was not a man of capacity. On the contrary, the incident serves to illustrate a type of character not altogether uncommon. The self- importance which went along with his extravagance and love of display, had with it a real sense of strength and a great deal of character. It is no unoOmmon phenomenon, especially among the typically aristocratic families of England, that extrava- gance and occasional want of good taste and of perfect breeding, even the vanity and listlessness of a fop, should go hand-in-hand with capacity for endurance, courage, and great practical ability, which, while unsuspected when there is no special call for their exercise, display themselves signally when occasion offers. Lord Moira, indeed, had shown no lack of the gifts which make a soldier early in life; but he had need in India of more varied qualities, and they were found when they were called for. And his public career is made all the more interesting in this volume from the per- sonal sketch which Major Ross has given us, and which we bear in mind as we read the story of his eventful administra- tion,—the sketch of a typical Englishman of aristocratic birth and traditions, fashioned at Harrow and Oxford, com- bining with native courage and practical ability the scholar- ship and information which our best public men have seldom been without, swaggering, like many an Eton or Harrow boy, to the end of his life, and yet proving effectually that swaggering is not necessarily idle boasting ; that it may be in great part the " overflow " of one who knows that he is worth something, and will prove it if necessary.
Perhaps the chief moral to be drawn from Lord Hastings' administration is that it is poor kindness to a country to leave a conquest unfinished. Hastings found British India in a most unsatisfactory condition, owing to the half-hearted policy of Lord Minto. The vigorous campaigns of Lord Wellesley, from 1798 to 1805—which had given an early opportunity for distinction to his brother, afterwards the "great Duke "—had been too aggressive for the East India Company, and Lord Minto assumed office with instructions to pursue a pacific policy. Lord Hastings' own views before his arrival were of the same character ; but he had no sooner reached India than he came to the conclusion that Wellesley had been right, and that there was no hope of order or stability except by carrying out his vigorous policy. In two striking passages Major Ross gives an account of the state of things with which Wellesley had to cope, and of the policy which Hastings carried out ultimately with such signal success :— " Lord Wellesley found the sovereignty, which had fallen from the effete hands of the Mughal Emperors, contested by the Hindu or Martithil confederacy of princes, and the various states governed by Muhammadan rulers. The latter were represented by the Nigm and by the Sultan of Mysore ; the former consisted of five chiefs, at the head of which was the Feshwi of Poona, and under him, in a disorderly fashion, the Ghiskwair of Baroda, Sindhia, of Gwalior, and Holkar of Indore, both of whom ruled in Central India, and the Bhonsla Rajli, of Nfigpur, whose sway extended over Borer and Orissa. Under the system inaugurated by the Governor- General, relations with the native states were regulated in the following manner. In the first place, there were those states with whom the British Government had concluded a subsidiary alliance. By this arrangement the princes concerned receive ad British force, called the subsidiary force,' for the protection of the eountry, and they maintained a contingent of their own, some- times commanded by European officers, to act with it ; they more- over agreed to pay for the maintenance of the subsidiary force, and nearly always ceded territory for the permanent discharge of this liability ; and they also engaged to discontinue all political relations with other states, except in concert with the Government of Calcutta, and to submit all claims and disputes to its arbitra- tion. The protected states were subject to a similar dependence, but their importance was not sufficiently great to oblige Govern- -ment to maintain troops among them as was done elsewhere. And lastly came the princes whose independence was recognised, and with whom ordinary treaties—some of them more or less protective—were concluded. Wellesley succeeded at first in putting an end so effectually to the aspirations of the NEuhana- madans, that during Lord Hastings' government little or no difficulty was experienced in that quarter. By these measures, the Nizam accepted a subsidiary alliance ; the Karnitik was annexed ; Mysore was reduced, the dynasty changed, and the state rendered dependent upon the British Government. Wellesley then turned his attention to the Marathits, but they were en- grossed in schemes of ambition, and were busy levying chauflt, or quarter revenues,' beyond the limits of their own territories. Thus, enjoying a wild and unbridled license to plunder their own dominions and to harry their neighbours, they refused to agree to any terms. As a natural consequence of their own lawlessness they were quarrelling among themselves, and in the course of the struggle the Peshwi was defeated by Holkar and fled for protec- tion to British territory. Urged by his necessities, he signed a sub- lsidiezy treaty at Bassein, 1802; and thereupon threw consternation among the other confederates, who chafed to see their suzerain reduced by this act to a degrading position of dependence upon Calcutta. Hostilities followed in 1802-3, known as the second llarithil war, and Sindhia and the Bhonsla Raja were crushed. The power of these princes having been thus curtailed, and the Ottekwar having already accepted a subsidiary alliance, the only hostile Maratbil force left unsubdued was that of Holkar. But the tide of victory had temporarily turned ; the military opera- tions which followed were not successful, disasters occurred, and Sindhia rose in revolt. Public opinion in England, moreover, dissatisfied with the vigour of Wellesley's Indian policy and failing to understand its importance, took alarm at these events and imagined that the solidity of British power was being over- turned by a few freebooters. The result was that a great Anglo- Indian ruler was recalled before his work was concluded, and a successor appointed with instructions to reverse his system and to come to terms with the enemy at any price. Meanwhile the course of military events had again changed, and British arms were once more victorious ; Holkar was flying before Lord Lake, and, as a matter of course, Sindhia promptly returned to his allegiance."
We must leave readers of Major Ross's book to follow in .detail his account of the unsatisfactory state in which affairs had been left, owing to the cessation for several years of Wellesley's vigorous policy. Hastings' own view of the task before him, at the critical time of 1817, is given in the follow- ing passage :— " It was evident to the Governor-General that the annihilation of the predatory system must entail a thorough change in the .conditions then existing in Central India. The evil that grew there in such alarming proportions was no accidental circumstance; in his opinion it was the direct result of chronic anarchy, which arose from the inordinate and unchecked ambition indulged in by the native rulers. All these princes were scrambling for per- eonal power, and not one of them was safe from the inroads of his neighbour ; their councils were divided, and their tributaries in constant rebellion ; their armies were continually clamouring for their pay, and their military leaders in a perpetual state of insubordination ; they observed no duties, and they acknowledged no rights ; society under their guidance was crumbling into ruins, and their subjects were pursuing their own selfish advantages. It was only natural, then, that men should combine to plunder and to devastate, and should continue to do BO until there was a complete revolution in the native ideas of government. Without • a reform in the lands subject to Narithii, influence, the reign of rapine must flourish, and if put down by force it must revive again like a noxious weed, and occasion ever-recurring exertions -to give some temporary immunity from its ravages. The con- • clusion was obvious, and the remedy could only be found in the imperial system introduced by Lord Wellesley. Some great prer must arise in India, and weld the whole mass into a solid- and civilised confederacy, bound together by the supremacy of -public law and respect for international obligations, where the -weak would find protection, and where all could enjoy security for their legitimate rights. India had been accustomed to a lord paramount, whom all acknowledged, and who in a
fashion settled disputes, and checked the ambition of the strong ; the absence of such a power, however imperfectly wielded by the Mughals, had produced disorder, and had inter- fered with the prosperity of British possessions. England alone could occupy this position, and the assumption of so onerous a responsibility was not only the natural result of her commanding prestige and ascendency in the East, but was also the direct con- sequence of the Governor-General's determination to stamp out altogether the bands of organised freebooters that infested the country."
The general results of Hastings's administration, both in consolidating British India, and in the social and moral benefits which it conferred on the country, are well explained in the last chapter. We have not attempted to give more than a general idea of a volume which is an excellent specimen of the class of book which is so much in request at present,—a historical volume contain- ing mu/tum in parvo, sufficiently readable to be acceptable to the general reader, and yet written with the care befitting the work of a student for students.
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