This was largely due to an
indiscreet letter of Hastings himself which encouraged the army to
claim the prize money.
indiscreet letter of Hastings himself which encouraged the army to
claim the prize money.
Cambridge History of India - v5 - British India
But
he can hardly have judged the matter with an unbiassed mind. The
episode of the treaty came at the end of a long series of disputes
between the Bengal and Madras Governments in which Hastings
displayed something less than the serene and balanced judgment of
which at one time he had given such striking evidence.
At the close of 1780 Lord Macartney had been appointed governor
of Madras at the moment when Hastings's friends, with Laurence
Sulivan at their head, had contracted a short-lived alliance with the
ministry under North. Macartney was therefore pledged to the
support of Hastings, and indeed came out with the full intention of
so doing. But on his arrival he found himself unable to adopt the
measures which Hastings had recommended to the southern presi-
dency. Hastings had urged an alliance with the Dutch, in order
to obtain from them a force of European infantry in return for the
cession of the district of Tinnevelly by the nawab. But Macartney
had brought out with him orders to seize the Dutch factories, since
the United Provinces had just joined the French and the Americans
in the war against Great Britain. In the second place Hastings had
advised the cession of the sarkars to the Nizam on condition of
substantial assistance from him against Hyder. Macartney had no
1
19
## p. 290 (#318) ############################################
290
THE CARNATIC: 1761-84
specific orders from the Company on this head; but none the less he
stoutly refused to dismember the Company's possessions; he urged
that such a cession would not produce effects commensurate with the
cost, and in that he was very likely right. A third cause of difference
between the two was fortuitous. Hastings, on Macartney's arrival,
had written to him advising that the raja of Tanjore should be
required, and if necessary compelled, to contribute his share to the
cost of the war. Macartney was in agreement with this view; and
forwarded an extract from Hastings's letter to the chairman and
deputy chairman of the Company in support of his own arguments.
Unfortunately the letter arrived in England when Sulivan and
Hastings's friends had lost control of the directorate; and led to severe
and unmerited reproaches directed against Hastings by the new
chairs. Hastings accused Macartney of having betrayed him to his
enemies; and does not seem to have been convinced by Macartney's
temperate and candid explanation. Gleig, it may be noted, was
mistaken in supposing that no answer was returned to Hastings's
letter of accusation. Besides these occasions of difference in which
Macartney was in the right there was that unfortunate letter to the
Marathas, which has already been mentioned, in which he was
decidedly in the wrong. The result was a strong tendency in each to
suspect and question the opinions of the other.
At the same time Macartney was involved in disputes with Coote
and with the nawab. In sending Coote to Madras the Bengal Gov-
ernment had invested him with separate and independent powers,
as the Madras Government had done with Clive, in not dissimilar
circumstances in 1756. Coote interpreted them in the widest possible
sense, neglecting to attend the meetings of the Select Committee and
declining to explain his plans for the conduct of the war, while he
harassed the committee with ceaseless complaints regarding the
shortness of transport and supplies. Both sides complained to Bengal;
and Bengal preferred to support Coote, without seriously considering
the Madras assertions that the financial management of the army,
as distinguished from the military conduct of the war, was wasteful
and extravagant. Underlying these disputes were intrigues in which
Paul Benfield took a considerable part, exasperating Coote's irritable
mind against the unfortunate governor.
From the first the resources of Madras had been wholly unequal
to the maintenance of the war. Bengal had contributed largely,
sending no less than 265 lakhs of rupees, in specie, bills, and supplies,
in the course of the four years that the war continued. But the goy-
ernment had frequently and loudly declared that it was incumbent on
the Madras Government to do everything in its power to increase its
own resources, particularly the contributions from the nawab's
! Macartney to Hastings, 10. May, 1783 (Brit. Mus. · Add. MSS, 22455,
f. 47 verso).
## p. 291 (#319) ############################################
ASSIGNMENT OF REVENUES
291
revenues. But that spring had completely dried up. Twenty years
of financial mismanagement had exhausted the nawab's treasury,
never very full. In the crisis which resulted from Hyder's invasion,
he had sought to evade payment rather than to provide with funds
the only power that would protect him. To the demands of the
Madras authorities he had returned blank refusals. Foreseeing that
this course could not be continued indefinitely, he had sent a mission
to Calcutta where terms were settled between him and the Supreme
Government, which proceeded to dispatch to Madras a special agent,
chosen with singular lack of tact from among the Madras covenanted
servants, to watch over the performance of the treaty. This was in
1781, before Macartney had arrived. In so doing Hastings and his
council had clearly overstepped the limits of their statutory powers;
but they had not doubted their power of coercing the Madras Gov-
ernment into obedience. It was as discredited as had been that of
Drake in 1756. But Macartney's arrival had changed the situation
altogether. He soon made this clear. He and the Select Committee
declared that they could not acquiesce in the appointment of an agent
to perform the functions with which they were specially charged by
the Company. But though they refused to recognise the agent whom
Hastings had appointed, they did adopt the Bengal treaty as the basis
of a new agreement which Macartney proceeded to negotiate with
the nawab. On 2 December, 1781, the latter executed an assignment
of his revenues to Macartney in person for a fixed term of five years,
reserving to his own use one-fifth of what amounts should be collected.
This agreement was formally approved by the Bengal Government.
But it soon was evident that it was no more genuine than had been
all the previous promises of the durbar. The revenues which were
collected were not paid in to the Company, but secretly transmitted
to the nawab. When it was proposed to appoint inspectors to watch
over the revenue officials, the nawab refused to grant them the
necessary powers; when it was proposed to lease out the country to
renters, the nawab refused to sign the documents appointing them.
In these circumstances Macartney resolved no longer to give way,
but to exercise himself the power of appointing the renters. In this
conduct he was confirmed by a letter from Bengal, written indeed
without knowledge of the crisis that had arisen at Madras, but
strongly and pointedly urging the absolute necessity of making the
assignment . a 'reality in order that all the resources of the country
might be made available for the conduct of the war. In this course
Macartney persevered with considerable success. The Committee of
Assigned Revenue, which he appointed to manage the business, in-
troduced great reforms into the nawab's disordered administration.
The gross revenue levied from the cultivators was reduced from 14. 4
to 13. 8 lakhs of pagodas in the six districts which rentained under
effective control, while at the same time by the abolition of a host of
needless charges the net revenue was increased from six to twelve
## p. 292 (#320) ############################################
292
THE CARNATIC, 1761-84
lakhs, and the total collections of assigned revenue amounted between
the end of 1781 and September, 1784, to over thirty-three lakhs of
pagodas, or over one hundred lakhs of rupees, not a fanam of which
would have been secured for the Company's use but for Macartney's
insistence on making the assignment a reality instead of a mere bit of
window-dressing.
The nawab, however, was untiring in his endeavours to secure
the abolition of the grant which he had made but had not intended to
make effectual. First he offered to Coote the management of the
revenues which he had already granted to Macartney; and then he
sent another mission to Bengal to induce the government to cancel
a measure of which it had repeatedly and formally approved. At
first the mission met with no success. But in the autumn of 1782, just
about the time of the return of Coote, Hastings changed his attitude.
The reasons remain obscure, but were almost certainly connected
with the necessity under which he thought he lay of preserving
the support of Benfield's friends in London. At the moment he,
Macpherson, and Coote were united on the need of annulling the
assignment. But when the matter came up for final decision in the
early part of 1783, though it was resolved that the assignment should
be annulled, yet when Hastings proposed to give Coote provisional
powers to suspend Macartney in case he failed to obey the orders of
Bengal, he failed altogether to carry the council with him. He and
Coote alone voted for the proposal; so that when Coote at last did
return to Madras, he lacked the orders to coerce Madras into obedi-
ence to most unpalatable resolutions. That government, however,
being privately informed of Hastings's intentions, had resolved no
longer to recognise the special powers which Coote had formerly
enjoyed, nor to render up the assignment until the orders of the court
of directors should be received. Coote died immediately on landing
at Madras, otherwise a fierce struggle must have resulted from the
decisions of the Bengal and Madras Governments respectively. As
it was the matter did not pass beyond the stage of controversy, the
Madras Government obstinately refusing to obey the orders of Bengal
until in 1785 the matter was settled by orders from the Company
requiring the assignment immediately to be cancelled. On this
Macartney at once resigned and went home rather than carry out a
policy which he was convinced, and rightly, could lead to nothing
except misgovernment. 1
These disputes with the Bengal Government did not exhaust the
difficulties which Macartney had to encounter. His controversy with
the commander-in-chief continued after Coote's departure to Bengal
and even after Coote's death. The Military. talents of Stuart, Coote's
L'Dodwell, "Hastings and the Assignment of the Carnatic”,. English Histo-
rical Review, XL, 375-96.
## p. 293 (#321) ############################################
THE COMMAND OF THE ARMY
293
successor, were too slender in any way to warrant the continuance of
the special powers which the commander-in-chief had been exercising;
and the Select Committee assumed the control of military affairs.
Stuart, however, paid it but an unwilling obedience and in some
points departed from its actual instructions. As soon as news of peace
with France was received, he was therefore summoned to hand over
the command of the army and return to Madras. There the dispute
developed with vigour and threatened to merge itself with the dispute
over the assignment. There appeared that same ominous conjunction,
the nawab, Benfield and Stuart, which had produced the arrest of
Pigot just seven years before. Macartney arrested Stuart, and sent
him off to England, while Benfield was ordered down to a small
station at a considerable distance from the presidency, where he
could do no harm. It is impossible to say with certainty to what
extent Macartney was justified in his belief of impending violence.
But there were many suspicious circumstances, and he cannot be
blamed for keeping on the safe side. Unluckily the matter involved
him in further disputes with the military authorities. Coote had been
commander-in-chief of the king's troops in India as well as of the
Company's and had been succeeded in this dual office by Stuart.
When the latter was dismissed in 1783 no difficulty arose over the
command of the Company's forces, but the command of the king's
was a very different question. The officer next in succession was Sir
John Burgoyne, who honestly, and, in the circumstances, justly,
doubted Macartney's power of removing the commander of the king's
troops. The two men failed to reach any agreement on the point,
and the outcome was that Macartney and the Select Committee
nominated Colonel Ross Lang, of the Company's service, to the
command-in-chief, with the rank of lieutenant-general, which placed
him in command of all the king's general officers on the coast. This
was a measure of very doubtful prudence. But for the sober conduct
of Burgoyne, it might have led to open disorder. At first all the
general officers withdrew from the army, directing their subordinates
to obey the orders issued by Lang. The object of this was to permit
the commands of government to be obeyed without giving up the
principles of the service which were regarded as sacrosanct. But
Macartney instead of accepti. . g this compromise in the spirit in which
it was offered was bent on triumph at any price. Burgoyne was
placed in arrest; the other general officers were struck off staff allow-
ances until they submitted. In the early part of his struggles with
the military he had on the whole been in the right; but in the con-
cluding part of his contest, with the king's general officers, he showed
much want of tact; and owed his success to the public spirit of his
adversaries rather than to his own wisdom. Finally the matter was
regulated by a decision from home that in future king's officers hold-
ing commands under the East India Company should receive letters
of service authorising them to exercise their rank only so long as they
## p. 294 (#322) ############################################
294
THE ĆARNATIC, 1761-84
continued in the Company's service, so that dismissal from the latter
automatically ended their authority in India.
It must be remembered that Macartney was placed in a position
of extraordinary difficulty owing to the lack of definition of powers
as between the Bengal and Madras Governments, and between the
civil government and the military commanders. The first was due to
the neglects of those who drew the Regulating Act; the second in
part to the anomalous position of the king's officers in India, in part
to the decision of Hastings in the crisis of 1780 to free Coote from
dependence on the civil government at Madras. Only a man of
very extraordinary gifts could have overcome such difficulties with
complete success.
## p. 295 (#323) ############################################
CHAPTER XVI
.
CHAIT SINGH, THE BEGAMS OF OUDH
AND FAIZULLA KHAN
THE
The Company's. exchequer had been seriously drained by the
Maratha War, and the outbreak of hostilities with France in 1778
warned Hastings that he must consider new methods of raising money.
He had recourse to the rather harsh and discreditable policy
which brought upon him the impeachment and which, when every
possible excuse has been inade for it, remains the one serious stain on
his administration. Was there no other alternative? Would it not
have been possible to raise a loan as would have been done in modern
times? The answer is that Hastings was very unwilling to contract
another bonded debt, for he had received much credit with the
directors for having paid off that which he found existing when he
came to India. He decided that he was justified in demanding from
Chait Singh, the raja of Benares, a special sum of over £50,000 in
addition to his regular tribute, or rent, of £225,000. The council
agreed, and were therefore equally responsible with Hastings for the
exaction. Francis, it is true, was inclined to demur and suggested-
a suggestion which was not accepted—that Chait Singh should be
assured at the same time that the demand was entirely exceptional,
but in the end he acquiesced in Hastings's policy. The same demand
was made in the two following years. Chait Singh naturally, follow-
ing the invariable practice in the East, protested against these
exactions, but after slight delay he paid the money.
The British methods of enforcing payment were certainly harsh.
In 1779 Chait Singh asked that the payment should be limited to
that year and his "contumacy" was punished by an order to pay
the whole in one sum instead of in instalments. When again he asked
for an indulgence of six or seven months, he was told that if he failed
to meet the original demand he would be treated as though he had
refused altogether. He urged that his agreement with the Company
should have exempted him from all contributions beyond the nor-
mal tribute. Troops were then ordered to march into his territory,
and an extra charge of £2000 was made against him for their
expenses.
In 1780, on the same day that he paid the last instalment of the
third £50,000, an entirely new demand was made upon him that he
should provide the Company with 2000 cavalry, altbergh when the
Company took over the sovereignty of Benares in 1775, he had been
merely recommended to maintain a body of that number of horse,
## p. 296 (#324) ############################################
296
CHAIT SINGH, OUDH BEGAMS, FAIZULLA KHAN
and was told that there would be "no obligation on him to do it". 1
Chait Singh replied that he was unable to spare so large a number.
The demand was then reduced to 1000. He mustered 500 horse and
500 infantry and sent a message to Hastings that these troops were
ready for his service. Chait Singh declared that he never received
an answer to this message, a statement which is almost certainly
accurate, for Hastings in his Narrative of the Insurrection practical-
ly admits it: “I do not know but it may be true. He had received
positive orders, and those had been repeated. It was his duty to
obey them, not to waste my time with letters of excuse". 2
Hastings now made up his mind to inflict upon Chait Singh the
immense fine of half a million sterling: "I was resolved to draw from
his guilt the means of relief to the Company's distress. . . . In a word
I had determined to make him pay largely for his pardon, or to exact
a severe vengeance for his past delinquency”. 3 Hastings was by this
time entirely his own master, for Wheler was the only councillor left
at Calcutta. An arrangement was made by which Hastings himself
was to go to Benares and settle the question as he deemed best, while
Wheler was to remain on duty in Bengal. The governor-general went
northward in July. Chait Singh met him at Baksar and abjectly
humbling himself, asked for pardon. Hastings refused to give him
any answer till his arrival at Benares. There he again refused to
grant him a personal interview and merely transmitted his demand
in writing. He received a letter from the raja, which to an impartial
judge would seem to err, if at all, in the direction of servility, but
which Hastings described as “Not only unsatisfactory in substance
but offensive in style”. 4
Though Hastings had taken with him only a weak escort, he
ordered Chait Singh to be put under arrest. The raja humbly submit-
ted but the troops, infuriated by the indignity placed upon their ruler
in his own capital, suddenly rose and massacred a company of British
sepoys with their officers. Chait Singh, fearing for the consequences,
escaped in the turmoil and joined his rebellious army. Hastings was
in the most imminent danger and had to fly for safety to Chunar.
There he showed his customary coolness and presence of mind,
rallied all available forces to his aid and drove back his enemy. Chait
Singh, maintaining his innocence of the massacre, was hunted over
the Ganges and fled to Gwalior. His dominions were sequestrated
and were conferred upon a nephew, the tribute at the same time
being raised from £225,000 to £400,000. The council at Calcutta, now
consisting of Wheler and Macpherson, were obviously embarrassed
in their attempts to defend and ratify these proceedings of their
chief. They felt bound to ask themselves certain questions, first,
"Where were the Governor-General's particular instructions for
1 Reports from Committee of the House of Commons, v, 489.
2 Warren Hastings, A Narrative of the Insurrrection which happened in
the Zamindary of Benares, p. 27. Idem, p. 9
4 Idem, p. 19.
3
## p. 297 (#325) ############################################
CHAIT SINGH'S TENURE
297
such extraordinary demands upon Chait Singh? ” To this they replied
that "he was fully authorised by the general tenor of his instructions”
and that in not requiring more particular injunctions “there was a
delicacy in the mode he preferred and it imposed a greater respon-
sibility. " Their second question was, "Why was Chait Singh put in
arrest when he offered to make every concession? ” to which they
replied that nothing but arrest could have convinced Chait Singh of
Hastings's determination. Their third question was "Whether there
was not a compact between him and the Company which specified that
he was only to pay them a certain annual tribute? ” They agreed that
this “involves much argument”, but they accept Hastings's own
version of the sanad or original agreement with Chait Singh given
in his Narrative. They admit that his actions "certainly precipitated
the storm from the cloud in which it had gathered", and that these
acts “judges at a distance, judges unoppressed with the actual
embarrassments of this government, may with great speciousness of
argument condemn". 1 Their attitude suggests a certain uneasiness,
together with an obvious desire to defend the governor-general. We
must deal here very shortly with certain technical and legal points
which were discussed at immense length in the impeachment. The
first is whether Chait Singh was an independent raja or a mere
zamindar. The fact was that though he undoubtedly had a zamindari
status, he had a very real measure of independence and quite an
exceptional position. Hastings had committed himself in the past to
the view that he was far more than a zamindar, but this question
clearly does not affect the main point at issue, which is whether Chait
Singh, whatever his eaxct degree of dependency upon the British,
was treated with fairness and mercy. In any case, as Grey pointed
.
out in the impeachment, Hastings's defenders were impaling them-
selves upon the horns of a dilemma, if they maintained that Chait
Singh was a mere zamindar and at the same time that the demand
made upon him was justifiable. In that case the exaction ought to
have taken the form of a general universal tax levied on all the
zamindars under the Company's rule; but it was directed only against
Chait Singh. Hastings had admitted that "there was no other person
in the situation of Chait Singh",? which was really fatal to the "mere
zamindar" theory. The second question is whether the Company had
not bound itself to levy no contribution upon him beyond his normal
tribute or rent of £225,000. It would take too long to discuss this
question in all its detail, but there is no doubt of the technical point
that such a promise had been definitely given in 1775. A later grant,
it is true, of 1776, contained the words that "all former sanads had
become null and void", and it was upon this fact that Hastings tried
to base a technical defence; but it is clear that Chait Singh had
1 Forrest, Selections from the State Papers in the Foreign Department, m,
830-2.
2 Bond, Speeches in the Trial of Warren Hastings, I, 328.
>
## p. 298 (#326) ############################################
298
CHAIT SINGH, OUDH BEGAMS, FAIZULLA KHAN
objected, as he had every right to do, to the insertion of these words,
and that the grant was altered accordingly. Hastings also claimed
that:
it [is] a right inherent in every government to impose, such assessments as it
judges expedient for the common service and protection of all its subjects; and
we are not precluded from it by any agreement subsisting between the Raja
and this government. 1
These Asiatic views naturally exposed Hastings to the attacks of
Burke.
A third question whether Chait Singh was in rebellion against the
Company hardly deserves examination. It is perfectly certain that,
until his troops broke out in detestation of the treatment to which
their ruler was subjected, the idea of rebellion had never dawned
upon the raja. The truth is that Hastings in his desperate need for
supplies allowed himself to depart from his usually generous and
kindly attitude towards Indian powers. Whatever the legal rights
and wrongs of the matter, no sane person can deny that Hastings's
treatment of the unfortunate raja was merciless and vindictive. This
can be illustrated by one incident which occurred in the year 1780.
In that year after the demand for a third sum of £50,000 had been
made, Chait Singh sending a confidential agent to Calcutta offered
Hastings a present of about £20,000. Hastings at first refused it,
which was of course the only proper course to take, for the sum was
meant as a bribe to save Chait Singh from the larger amount of
£50,000. If it was right to levy the latter sum, it was unquestionably
most improper to receive the former. But Hastings after a few days,
being in serious need of money to equip an expedition against Sindhia,
accepted the money. We need not here consider the unconstitutional
nature of his act in taking such sums without the knowledge of nis
council, the difficulties in which he involved himself by representing
the money as a gift from his private estate or the unfortunate view of
money transactions which the whole affair implies; but it is difficult
to understand how any man of ordinary feeling and consideration
for his fellow-creatures could accept the proffered gift of £20,000
and then immediately exact the larger sum of £50,000; confront his
suppliant with a further demand for troops, and, on the ground that
the demand was not met, proceed to levy a fine of £500,000. There
seems no doubt, as Sir Alfred Lyall points out and as Hastings's own
language shows, that the governor-general had never quite forgiven
Chait Singh for having in the crisis of 1777 sent an emissary to make
favour with Clavering.
Quite apart from the morality of the transaction, Hastings lies
open to criticism in regard to the policy of it. He has been justified,
after all other defences
have been surrendered, on the ground that the
1 Reports from Committees of the House of Commons, v, 463.
## p. 299 (#327) ############################################
CONDITION OF BENARES
299
a
political situation was so serious as to justify any means of obtaining
money. The answer to this is that he obtained none, and, what is
more, placed his own valuable life in the utmost peril. By his im-
prudent action in arresting Chait Singh he was responsible for the
uprising of the people of Benares; the raja escaped with part of his
wealth-the amount he took with him was in all probability grossly
exaggerated—and the rest of it amounting to twenty-three lakhs of
rupees was seized by the troops at Bijaigarh who promptly proceeded
to divide it up amongst themselves.
This was largely due to an
indiscreet letter of Hastings himself which encouraged the army to
claim the prize money. The immediate result therefore on the finan-
cial side was that the Company incurred the expense of the military
operations that ensued. For the moment they got nothing, and it was
an immediate subvention that was required. Hastings afterwards
boasted, “I lost the zemindari with the rent of 22 lakhs; I recovered
it with a revenue of 40”. 1 But this only applied of course to the
future, and as a matter of fact for a long time the augmented revenue
(partly owing to the simultaneous occurrence of a famine) could not
be raised. Two successive ministers of finance were dismissed be-
cause they failed to produce it. All the evidence shows that it was a
very long time before Benares recovered from the heavy exactions
made upon it. Hastings, with a curious detachment which often pre-
vented him from seeing, or at any rate from acknowledging the
consequences of his own actions, himself bears witness to the desola-
tion of the country without apparently the least apprehension that he
was in any way responsible for it. In June, 1784, he wrote that he
would avoid Benares on his way back to Calcutta, "for I underwent
the persecution of mobs of complainants from Buxar to Joosee in my
way thither, and there is now a little mob parading even at my gate”. ?
In 1788 Lord Cornwallis sent Jonathan Duncan as a commissioner to
report on the condition of Benares. His report dealt one by one with
the districts of the province and is a most serious indictment of the
treatment meted out to Benares. In one district it is said that a third
of the land is uncultivated. In another for about twelve or fourteen
miles, "the whole appeared one continual waste as far as the eye
could reach”. In a third in a stretch of about twelve miles “not above
twenty fields of cultivated ground are to be seen: all the rest being
as far as the eye can reach, one general waste of long grass”. The
report adds significantly that this falling off in cultivation is said
to have happened in the course of a few years, that is, since the
late raja's expulsion. 3
Hastings having failed, as we have seen, to obtain any money from
Chait Singh had to seek for another source of supply. The nawab of
Oudh, Asaf-ud-daula, owed the Company at this time, for arrears of
1 Gleig, op. cit. II, 421.
2 Idem, III, 185.
8 Minutes of the Evidence in the Trial of Warren Hastings, pp. 261-2.
## p. 300 (#328) ############################################
300
CHAIT SINGH, OUDH BEGAMS, FAIZULLA KHAN
subsidy, about fifteen lakhs of rupees, and he professed that he had
no means of discharging the debt. His mother and grandmother,
the begams or princesses of Oudh, had inherited from the late nawab
large jagirs or landed estates and a treasure amounting it is said to
about £2,000,000. The nawab had long desired to get control of this
wealth and claimed that it was unjustly withheld from him. The will
had never been produced and it was claimed that by the Muham-
madan law the begams had no right to inherit so large a proportion
of the late ruler's property. In any case, it was said, this property
was really part of the wealth of the sovereign of the country and the
first claim upon it ought to have been the late nawab's debt to the
Company. All this was no doubt largely true, but in 1775 the widow
of Shuja-ud-daula, on the urgent representation of the British
Resident, agreed to pay her son £300,000 in addition to £250,000
already given to him, on condition that he and the Company
guaranteed that no further demand should ever be made upon her.
The guarantee was given. In 1781 Asaf-ud-daula, urged on thereto
by the Resident, as is clear from the private correspondence between
Hastings and Middleton, asked that he might be allowed to resume
the estates and seize the treasure of the begams. Hastings in sore
need of money agreed to the proposal and withdrew the Company's
protection from the begams. At this point the nawab, who had
probably never desired to seize the treasure, and was afraid, as the
Resident said, of the "uncommonly violent temper of his female
relations”, began to hang back, and had henceforward to be steadily
driven on by the British authorities to avail himself of the opportunity
thus given him. In December, 1781,. Hastings wrote to Middleton,
"You must not allow any negotiations or forbearance, but must
prosecute both services until the begams are at the entire mercy of
the nawab”. 1 In January, 1782, he writes to say that he had hoped
the nawab would have immediately entered upon the measures
agreed upon, but "after having long waited, with much impatience,
for this effect, I was apprised . . . that the nawab, from what cause
I know not, had shown a great reluctance to enter on this business”.
He tells the council that if the Resident cannot carry out the instruc-
tions, "I would myself proceed to Lucknow, and afford the nawab
any personal assistance for carrying them into execution . . . I dread
the imbecility and irresolution, which too much prevail in the nawab's
councils”. Hastings refers to "the pressing letters which I have
written to the nawab, the strong injunctions which I have repeated
to the Resident”. 2 Middleton replied that “the temporising and
indecisive conduct of the nawab seem to promise an issue very
different from that expected in your commands”. 3 Hastings, however,
was not to be deterred from his object by the unwillingness of
1 Forrest, Selections from the State Papers in the Foreign Department,
III, 950.
2 Report from Committees of the House of Commons, vi, 537.
3. Idem, p. 538.
9
>
## p. 301 (#329) ############################################
THE BEGAM'S CASE
301
the nawab or the shrinking from strong measures of his representative,
and in February we find him writing to Scott that he had been
compelled to rouse Middleton's activity "by letters written in a style
of the greatest severity". 1
Middleton, not having satisfied Hastings as sufficiently energetic
in applying coercion, was superseded as Resident by Bristow, and
Bristow wrote in June :
The begam complains that having no pension or jagir she now subsists, her
family and herself, with the greatest difficulty. . . . Previous to my arrival her
eunuchs were kept for many months in confinement, and led out to corporal
punishment. . . . These measures failed, and you have before you the opinions
given by Major Gilpin . . . that all that force could do has been done. 2
The above quotations are perhaps sufficient to meet the theory
that Hastings was not responsible for what his agents were doing at
Faizabad and that the latter were merely carrying out the wishes of
the nawab. As a matter of fact the nawab was a reluctant party
throughout, and Hastings asks that a very severe rebuke should be
given to his minister for having assumed a very unbecoming tone of
refusal, reproach and resentment in opposition to measures recom-
mended by me and even to acts done by my authority”. As to
the actual treatment inflicted on the begam's two ministers, they
were imprisoned from January to December, 1782, and they were for
a time deprived of food and put in irons. It seems doubtful whether
flogging was actually inflicted.
Finally in December, 1782, they paid over large sums of money
and were released. The British officer who had charge of them wrote:
"I wish you had been present at the enlargement of the prisoners.
The quivering lips, the tears of joy stealing down the poor men's
cheeks was a scene truly affecting". 1
The justification put forward by Hastings for tearing up the
Company's guarantee was that the begams had supported the rising
of Chait Singh and were in rebellion against the British Government.
The answer to this appears to be that, even if it were entirely true,
the proper course would have been to confront the begams with the
charge, produce the evidence and demand proofs of innocence, not
to cancel the treaty and cast them to the tender mercies of the nawab,
or rather to those of the British Resident.
The evidence for the alleged rebellion is conflicting. It depends
upon the affidavits taken by Sir Elijah Impey, in his injudicious
attempt to support the governor-general, the statements of Colonel
Hannay and his officers, and those of Wheler and others. The
affidavits are worthless. Sir James Stephen points out that only ten
1 Gleig, op. cit. I, 449.
2 Forrest, Selections from the State Papers in the Foreign Department,
IDT, 969.
Idem, p. 982.
* Bond, Speeches in the Trial of Warren Hastings, 1. 107.
8
## p. 302 (#330) ############################################
302
CHAIT SINGH, OUDH BEGAMS, FAIZULLA KHAN
a
of them mention the begams and then only on hearsay, and if they
are to be accepted at all, most of them equally inculpate the nawab
himself-an awkward fact which was ignored by Hastings and the
council. The evidence of Colonel Hannay can only be accepted with
many reservations; he was in the service of the nawab and acquired
a large fortune by questionable means. The country was no doubt
in a state of disturbance and Hannay and his colleagues would be
interested, as Mill suggests, in finding for these disturbances some
cause other than their own malversations. The third piece of evidence,
and the strongest, is the statement of Wheler, an honest man, that
he believed the begams were really stirring up a rebellion. Against
the theory of the defection of the begams, is, first of all, the extreme
improbability of their taking any part in any serious movement
against the British Government. Even those who afterwards adopted
the charge, wrote and spoke during the events as though such a thing
were impossible. For instance, in a letter from Middleton to Hastings
on 18 January, 1782, the phrase occurs, "The reliance which not-
withstanding the part I have avowed and acted with respect to her
she probably placed in the support and mediation of our Govern-
ment". 1 Further, in all the correspondence that passed between
Hastings and Wheler at the time, there is no mention at all of any
rebellion. The only question is how soon the money could be exacted
from the begam and her ministers. In the private correspondence
too between Middleton, Impey and Hastings there is nothing to lead
one to suppose that the money was being levied as a fine for an
insurrection. It seems probable that the charge of rebellion was ex
post facto, made when it was found necessary to present a justification
for the whole business. It was easy enough to do this, because under
the wretched government of the nawab there was always an endemic
insurrection going on in Oudh, the unfortunate rajas who owned
him as their suzerain being frequently in revolt against his oppres-
sions. In any case we must be fair enough to admit that the treatment
meted out to Chait Singh, whatever its justification, was sufficient to
make any Indian power adopt measures for its own protection. The
truth is that, making every possible allowance for Hastings's financial
difficulty, and granting for purposes of argument that the begams
were quite willing to stir up every kind of trouble for him, we must
yet agree that it was a sordid, shabby and sorry business. Before we
leave the subject a curious episode must be mentioned. We have
seen that Hastings in 1780 took a present of £20,000 from Chait
Singh while engaged in pressing him for money. In almost exactly
the same way in 1781, he was offered and accepted £100,000 from
the nawab of Oudh. He employed it in the Company's service and
then after a considerable delay and some amazing manipulation of
the accounts, he reported the matter to the directors, and made the
1 Minutes of the Evidence, p. 820.
## p. 303 (#331) ############################################
QUESTION OF PRESENTS
303
astonishing request that they should present it to himself as a token
of their approval. We need not concern ourselves here with the
decency or taste of his suggestion to the directors—the suggestion we
must remember of a man whose official salary with allowances was
about £30,000_but the transaction throws a vivid light on Hastings's
laxity of view on all monetary transactions. The money was un-
doubtedly offered by the nawab as a bribe to Hastings to release him
from the disagreeable task of coercing the begams. Hastings accepts
it but continues his policy nevertheless, an exact parallel to his
conduct in the Chait Singh case. The whole proceeding was kept
secret from the council, a most unconstitutional act. If the money
had been taken at all, it ought to have been accepted as a mere in-
stalment of the debt due to the Company. In truth there is no defence
at all for the acceptance of these sums. Modern historians sometimes
write as though the practice was defensible, if it can be proved that
Hastings spent the money in the public service. But the Regulating
Act had forbidden presents absolutely, for the sake of Indian princes.
The whole theory underlying them was highly objectionable. Either
the giver obtained some special favour from the government, which
means corruption, or he did not, which implies deception. The Select
Committee of 1781 said with justice that the generosity of the donors
“is found in proportion, not to the opulence they possess or to the
favours they receive, but to the indigence they feel, and the insults
they are exposed to",1 and Burke for once was surely fully justified
when he described presents from Indian rulers as "the donations of
misery to power, the gifts of wretchedness to the oppressors". 2
Hastings we must admit seems to have had a blind spot in his mind
as regards money matters.
A third case of Hastings's financial operations with an Indian
ruler must be mentioned as it throws considerable light on the other
two. We have explained how at the end of the Rohilla War the only
chieftain of that race left in possession of territory was Faizulla Khan
of Rampur. A peace had been made between him and the nawab of
Oudh. By it he was to retain not more than 5000 troops and if the
nawab was at war he was to "send two or three thousand men
according to his ability":3 Faizulla Khan proved himself an able
and vigorous ruler, as Hastings some years later freely admitted.
Under him the country prospered and the people were contented.
In February, 1778, there were some rumours that he was maintaining
an unnecessarily large army. Middleton, Resident in Oudh, said that
he might well have acted in this way owing to the injustice and
oppression of the nawab, but the commissioner who was sent down
to Rampur to investigate reported that Faizulla Khan had “preserved
1 Reports from Committees of the House of Commons, v7, 585.
? Bond, Speeches in the Trial of Warren Hastings, I, 70.
8 Reports from Committees of the House of Commons, VI, 22.
## p. 304 (#332) ############################################
304
CHAIT SINGH, OUDH BEGAMS, FAIZULLA KHAN
3
every article of his treaty inviolate”. 1 Faizulla Khan was, as a matter
of fact, one of the very small band of Indian rulers like Ranjit Singh,
who formed a great admiration for the British nation and recognised
once and for all the advantage of trusting them. It is rather a lament-
able reflection that he was very nearly entangled and ruined in the
policy of Hastings. He asked that the treaty which Champion had
made between him and the nawab might now receive the Company's
own ratification, on the ground that it was “the only power in which
he had confidence, and which he could look up to for protection”. ?
The council agreed to his proposal and a special treaty was presented
to him. Soon afterwards Faizulla Khan, whose treaty only bound
him to assist the nawab, on a hint from Middleton offered to lend
the Company 2000 horse. He was formally thanked for this mark of
his faithful attachment to the Company and the English nation.
In November, 1780, Hastings obliged the nawab of Oudh to write
to Faizulla Khan requiring him to furnish “the quota of troops
stipulated by treaty . . . being 5000 horse". It is charitable to assume
that in the original demand Hastings had simply made a mistake
about the terms of his treaty. But this excuse could not be made for
his subsequent action, for Faizulla Khan replied civilly and moderately
pointing out that he was only bound to furnish 2000 or 3000 troops,
not necessarily horse, "according to his ability", and offering to dis-
charge his liabilities to the full by sending 2000 horse and 1000 foot.
It has been well pointed out that if he had been able to provide 5000
horse he might have been charged with breaking the other article
in the treaty which prevented him from maintaining more than that
number as his total army. Hastings recorded a minute that Faizulla
Khan had "evaded the performance of . . . the treaty” 4 which was
of course a direct falsehood. He then in March, 1781, slightly
mitigating his demand, sent a deputation requiring the delivery of
3000 cavalry. As Faizulla Khan firmly but politely maintained his
former position, Hastings made a formal protest against him for
breaking the treaty and gave the nawab of Oudh permission to re-
sume his lands. That Hastings knew perfectly well that the treaty
had not been broken is proved by the amazing minute which he laid
before the council at Calcutta :
The conduct of Faizulla Khan, in refusing the aid demanded, though not
an absolute breach of treaty was evasive and uncandid . . . so scrupulous an
attention to literal expression, when a more liberal interpretation would have
been highly useful and acceptable to us, strongly marks his unfriendly dispo-
sition, though it may not impeach his fidelity. 5
Even at this distance of time the thought that a British administrator
could have written such words arouses a flush of shame and it may
1 Reports from Committees of the House of Commons, VI, 24.
2 Idem, p. 24.
3 Idem, 27.
• Idem, p. 29.
% Idem, p. 31.
## p. 305 (#333) ############################################
CHANGES IN OUDH
305
safely be surmised that such a justification for charging a ruler with
disaffection has never been offered before or since. Faizulla Khan
escaped ruin partly because Hastings, it is to be hoped with a sense
of compunction, postponed for a time the execution of the decree
against him, and partly because before it was put into force the
directors of the Company much to their honour sent a stern dispatch
condemning the whole business and forbidding Hastings to go any
further in the matter.
Hastings's final activities in India were devoted to an attempt at
reconstruction in Benares and Oudh. Bristow had not succeeded in
recovering the Company's balances from that incorrigibly insolvent
debtor, the nawab of Oudh, and his own financial transactions seem
to have been open to serious criticism. The nawab himself desired,
or more probably had been ordered by Hastings to ask for, the recall
of the Resident, and the abolition of the residency. Hastings may
have been right in demanding a complete change of system in Oudh,
but it must be confessed that his action in the matter was curiously
tortuous, and no quite adequate explanation of his conduct has ever
been offered. He had himself given Bristow the strictest orders to
obtain a complete control over the government of Oudh. Soon after-
wards he proposed to the council that Bristow should be recalled for
having attempted to tyrannise over the nawab, and that the nawab
himself, and his minister, Haidar Beg Khan, whom he had in the past
severely criticised, should jointly be security for the Company's debts.
The council at first defended Bristow on the ground that he had only
been endeavouring to carry out his instructions, and that Haidar Beg
Khan had consistently opposed all reforms. Finally, however, with
great reluctance they accepted Hastings's proposal and agreed that
he should proceed to Lucknow to carry out the change. Hastings
arrived at the nawab's capital on 27 March, 1784, and attacked his
new task with characteristic courage and buoyancy. "It is my ambi-
tion”, he wrote,. “to close my government with the redemption of
a great government, family, and nation from ruin . . . it is the boldest
enterprise of my public life, but I confidently hazard the conse-
quences. ” 1 It is generally said that he was very successful, but there
is not much evidence of it; he merely won a respite for the time by
a heavy mortgage on the future. He conciliated the nawab by his
dominating personality, by removing the residency, and by restoring
the jagirs to the begams-an act of restitution which had been ordered
by the court of directors. He also claimed to have "adjusted all the
disputed accounts between the Nabob: Vizier and the Company”. 2 The
position in Oudh was no doubt easier for the moment, but as soon
as Hastings had departed, the hollowness of his reforms was revealed.
It then appeared that, if the residency was removed, there had been
established in its place an "agency of the governor-general", which
1 Gleig, op. cit. m,
153.
* Idem, p. 184.
20
## p. 306 (#334) ############################################
306
CHAIT SINGH, OUDH BEGAMS, FAIZULLA KHAN
interfered quite as drastically in the affairs of Oudh, and was a still
greater burden on its revenues. Whereas the expense of Bristow's
residency had been £64,202 per annum, the cost of the new agency
was over £112,000, of which £22,000 was the salary of the agent.
As soon as Cornwallis came out, the nawab. approached him with
exactly the same complaint that he had addressed to Hastings, that
the burden upon his country was insupportable. As for the alleged
reform of the finances, Cornwallis writes: "I cannot express how
much I was concerned . . . to be witness of the disordered state of his
finances and government, and of the desolated appearance of the
country. The evils were too alarming to admit of palliation". 1
In regard to Benares, Hastings laid before the council a scheme
for securing the revenues, for removing incapable and oppressive
officials, and for safeguarding the tenancy rights of the ryots; but even
his unremitting defender Gleig admits, that in the regeneration of
Benares he was not so immediately successful as in the case of Oudh. ”
No real reformation was possible, so long as the British Resident was
allowed to amass, exclusive of his official salary, an income of £40,000
a year, and Cornwallis could only describe the whole position there
as “a scene of the grossest corruption and mismanagement”.
he can hardly have judged the matter with an unbiassed mind. The
episode of the treaty came at the end of a long series of disputes
between the Bengal and Madras Governments in which Hastings
displayed something less than the serene and balanced judgment of
which at one time he had given such striking evidence.
At the close of 1780 Lord Macartney had been appointed governor
of Madras at the moment when Hastings's friends, with Laurence
Sulivan at their head, had contracted a short-lived alliance with the
ministry under North. Macartney was therefore pledged to the
support of Hastings, and indeed came out with the full intention of
so doing. But on his arrival he found himself unable to adopt the
measures which Hastings had recommended to the southern presi-
dency. Hastings had urged an alliance with the Dutch, in order
to obtain from them a force of European infantry in return for the
cession of the district of Tinnevelly by the nawab. But Macartney
had brought out with him orders to seize the Dutch factories, since
the United Provinces had just joined the French and the Americans
in the war against Great Britain. In the second place Hastings had
advised the cession of the sarkars to the Nizam on condition of
substantial assistance from him against Hyder. Macartney had no
1
19
## p. 290 (#318) ############################################
290
THE CARNATIC: 1761-84
specific orders from the Company on this head; but none the less he
stoutly refused to dismember the Company's possessions; he urged
that such a cession would not produce effects commensurate with the
cost, and in that he was very likely right. A third cause of difference
between the two was fortuitous. Hastings, on Macartney's arrival,
had written to him advising that the raja of Tanjore should be
required, and if necessary compelled, to contribute his share to the
cost of the war. Macartney was in agreement with this view; and
forwarded an extract from Hastings's letter to the chairman and
deputy chairman of the Company in support of his own arguments.
Unfortunately the letter arrived in England when Sulivan and
Hastings's friends had lost control of the directorate; and led to severe
and unmerited reproaches directed against Hastings by the new
chairs. Hastings accused Macartney of having betrayed him to his
enemies; and does not seem to have been convinced by Macartney's
temperate and candid explanation. Gleig, it may be noted, was
mistaken in supposing that no answer was returned to Hastings's
letter of accusation. Besides these occasions of difference in which
Macartney was in the right there was that unfortunate letter to the
Marathas, which has already been mentioned, in which he was
decidedly in the wrong. The result was a strong tendency in each to
suspect and question the opinions of the other.
At the same time Macartney was involved in disputes with Coote
and with the nawab. In sending Coote to Madras the Bengal Gov-
ernment had invested him with separate and independent powers,
as the Madras Government had done with Clive, in not dissimilar
circumstances in 1756. Coote interpreted them in the widest possible
sense, neglecting to attend the meetings of the Select Committee and
declining to explain his plans for the conduct of the war, while he
harassed the committee with ceaseless complaints regarding the
shortness of transport and supplies. Both sides complained to Bengal;
and Bengal preferred to support Coote, without seriously considering
the Madras assertions that the financial management of the army,
as distinguished from the military conduct of the war, was wasteful
and extravagant. Underlying these disputes were intrigues in which
Paul Benfield took a considerable part, exasperating Coote's irritable
mind against the unfortunate governor.
From the first the resources of Madras had been wholly unequal
to the maintenance of the war. Bengal had contributed largely,
sending no less than 265 lakhs of rupees, in specie, bills, and supplies,
in the course of the four years that the war continued. But the goy-
ernment had frequently and loudly declared that it was incumbent on
the Madras Government to do everything in its power to increase its
own resources, particularly the contributions from the nawab's
! Macartney to Hastings, 10. May, 1783 (Brit. Mus. · Add. MSS, 22455,
f. 47 verso).
## p. 291 (#319) ############################################
ASSIGNMENT OF REVENUES
291
revenues. But that spring had completely dried up. Twenty years
of financial mismanagement had exhausted the nawab's treasury,
never very full. In the crisis which resulted from Hyder's invasion,
he had sought to evade payment rather than to provide with funds
the only power that would protect him. To the demands of the
Madras authorities he had returned blank refusals. Foreseeing that
this course could not be continued indefinitely, he had sent a mission
to Calcutta where terms were settled between him and the Supreme
Government, which proceeded to dispatch to Madras a special agent,
chosen with singular lack of tact from among the Madras covenanted
servants, to watch over the performance of the treaty. This was in
1781, before Macartney had arrived. In so doing Hastings and his
council had clearly overstepped the limits of their statutory powers;
but they had not doubted their power of coercing the Madras Gov-
ernment into obedience. It was as discredited as had been that of
Drake in 1756. But Macartney's arrival had changed the situation
altogether. He soon made this clear. He and the Select Committee
declared that they could not acquiesce in the appointment of an agent
to perform the functions with which they were specially charged by
the Company. But though they refused to recognise the agent whom
Hastings had appointed, they did adopt the Bengal treaty as the basis
of a new agreement which Macartney proceeded to negotiate with
the nawab. On 2 December, 1781, the latter executed an assignment
of his revenues to Macartney in person for a fixed term of five years,
reserving to his own use one-fifth of what amounts should be collected.
This agreement was formally approved by the Bengal Government.
But it soon was evident that it was no more genuine than had been
all the previous promises of the durbar. The revenues which were
collected were not paid in to the Company, but secretly transmitted
to the nawab. When it was proposed to appoint inspectors to watch
over the revenue officials, the nawab refused to grant them the
necessary powers; when it was proposed to lease out the country to
renters, the nawab refused to sign the documents appointing them.
In these circumstances Macartney resolved no longer to give way,
but to exercise himself the power of appointing the renters. In this
conduct he was confirmed by a letter from Bengal, written indeed
without knowledge of the crisis that had arisen at Madras, but
strongly and pointedly urging the absolute necessity of making the
assignment . a 'reality in order that all the resources of the country
might be made available for the conduct of the war. In this course
Macartney persevered with considerable success. The Committee of
Assigned Revenue, which he appointed to manage the business, in-
troduced great reforms into the nawab's disordered administration.
The gross revenue levied from the cultivators was reduced from 14. 4
to 13. 8 lakhs of pagodas in the six districts which rentained under
effective control, while at the same time by the abolition of a host of
needless charges the net revenue was increased from six to twelve
## p. 292 (#320) ############################################
292
THE CARNATIC, 1761-84
lakhs, and the total collections of assigned revenue amounted between
the end of 1781 and September, 1784, to over thirty-three lakhs of
pagodas, or over one hundred lakhs of rupees, not a fanam of which
would have been secured for the Company's use but for Macartney's
insistence on making the assignment a reality instead of a mere bit of
window-dressing.
The nawab, however, was untiring in his endeavours to secure
the abolition of the grant which he had made but had not intended to
make effectual. First he offered to Coote the management of the
revenues which he had already granted to Macartney; and then he
sent another mission to Bengal to induce the government to cancel
a measure of which it had repeatedly and formally approved. At
first the mission met with no success. But in the autumn of 1782, just
about the time of the return of Coote, Hastings changed his attitude.
The reasons remain obscure, but were almost certainly connected
with the necessity under which he thought he lay of preserving
the support of Benfield's friends in London. At the moment he,
Macpherson, and Coote were united on the need of annulling the
assignment. But when the matter came up for final decision in the
early part of 1783, though it was resolved that the assignment should
be annulled, yet when Hastings proposed to give Coote provisional
powers to suspend Macartney in case he failed to obey the orders of
Bengal, he failed altogether to carry the council with him. He and
Coote alone voted for the proposal; so that when Coote at last did
return to Madras, he lacked the orders to coerce Madras into obedi-
ence to most unpalatable resolutions. That government, however,
being privately informed of Hastings's intentions, had resolved no
longer to recognise the special powers which Coote had formerly
enjoyed, nor to render up the assignment until the orders of the court
of directors should be received. Coote died immediately on landing
at Madras, otherwise a fierce struggle must have resulted from the
decisions of the Bengal and Madras Governments respectively. As
it was the matter did not pass beyond the stage of controversy, the
Madras Government obstinately refusing to obey the orders of Bengal
until in 1785 the matter was settled by orders from the Company
requiring the assignment immediately to be cancelled. On this
Macartney at once resigned and went home rather than carry out a
policy which he was convinced, and rightly, could lead to nothing
except misgovernment. 1
These disputes with the Bengal Government did not exhaust the
difficulties which Macartney had to encounter. His controversy with
the commander-in-chief continued after Coote's departure to Bengal
and even after Coote's death. The Military. talents of Stuart, Coote's
L'Dodwell, "Hastings and the Assignment of the Carnatic”,. English Histo-
rical Review, XL, 375-96.
## p. 293 (#321) ############################################
THE COMMAND OF THE ARMY
293
successor, were too slender in any way to warrant the continuance of
the special powers which the commander-in-chief had been exercising;
and the Select Committee assumed the control of military affairs.
Stuart, however, paid it but an unwilling obedience and in some
points departed from its actual instructions. As soon as news of peace
with France was received, he was therefore summoned to hand over
the command of the army and return to Madras. There the dispute
developed with vigour and threatened to merge itself with the dispute
over the assignment. There appeared that same ominous conjunction,
the nawab, Benfield and Stuart, which had produced the arrest of
Pigot just seven years before. Macartney arrested Stuart, and sent
him off to England, while Benfield was ordered down to a small
station at a considerable distance from the presidency, where he
could do no harm. It is impossible to say with certainty to what
extent Macartney was justified in his belief of impending violence.
But there were many suspicious circumstances, and he cannot be
blamed for keeping on the safe side. Unluckily the matter involved
him in further disputes with the military authorities. Coote had been
commander-in-chief of the king's troops in India as well as of the
Company's and had been succeeded in this dual office by Stuart.
When the latter was dismissed in 1783 no difficulty arose over the
command of the Company's forces, but the command of the king's
was a very different question. The officer next in succession was Sir
John Burgoyne, who honestly, and, in the circumstances, justly,
doubted Macartney's power of removing the commander of the king's
troops. The two men failed to reach any agreement on the point,
and the outcome was that Macartney and the Select Committee
nominated Colonel Ross Lang, of the Company's service, to the
command-in-chief, with the rank of lieutenant-general, which placed
him in command of all the king's general officers on the coast. This
was a measure of very doubtful prudence. But for the sober conduct
of Burgoyne, it might have led to open disorder. At first all the
general officers withdrew from the army, directing their subordinates
to obey the orders issued by Lang. The object of this was to permit
the commands of government to be obeyed without giving up the
principles of the service which were regarded as sacrosanct. But
Macartney instead of accepti. . g this compromise in the spirit in which
it was offered was bent on triumph at any price. Burgoyne was
placed in arrest; the other general officers were struck off staff allow-
ances until they submitted. In the early part of his struggles with
the military he had on the whole been in the right; but in the con-
cluding part of his contest, with the king's general officers, he showed
much want of tact; and owed his success to the public spirit of his
adversaries rather than to his own wisdom. Finally the matter was
regulated by a decision from home that in future king's officers hold-
ing commands under the East India Company should receive letters
of service authorising them to exercise their rank only so long as they
## p. 294 (#322) ############################################
294
THE ĆARNATIC, 1761-84
continued in the Company's service, so that dismissal from the latter
automatically ended their authority in India.
It must be remembered that Macartney was placed in a position
of extraordinary difficulty owing to the lack of definition of powers
as between the Bengal and Madras Governments, and between the
civil government and the military commanders. The first was due to
the neglects of those who drew the Regulating Act; the second in
part to the anomalous position of the king's officers in India, in part
to the decision of Hastings in the crisis of 1780 to free Coote from
dependence on the civil government at Madras. Only a man of
very extraordinary gifts could have overcome such difficulties with
complete success.
## p. 295 (#323) ############################################
CHAPTER XVI
.
CHAIT SINGH, THE BEGAMS OF OUDH
AND FAIZULLA KHAN
THE
The Company's. exchequer had been seriously drained by the
Maratha War, and the outbreak of hostilities with France in 1778
warned Hastings that he must consider new methods of raising money.
He had recourse to the rather harsh and discreditable policy
which brought upon him the impeachment and which, when every
possible excuse has been inade for it, remains the one serious stain on
his administration. Was there no other alternative? Would it not
have been possible to raise a loan as would have been done in modern
times? The answer is that Hastings was very unwilling to contract
another bonded debt, for he had received much credit with the
directors for having paid off that which he found existing when he
came to India. He decided that he was justified in demanding from
Chait Singh, the raja of Benares, a special sum of over £50,000 in
addition to his regular tribute, or rent, of £225,000. The council
agreed, and were therefore equally responsible with Hastings for the
exaction. Francis, it is true, was inclined to demur and suggested-
a suggestion which was not accepted—that Chait Singh should be
assured at the same time that the demand was entirely exceptional,
but in the end he acquiesced in Hastings's policy. The same demand
was made in the two following years. Chait Singh naturally, follow-
ing the invariable practice in the East, protested against these
exactions, but after slight delay he paid the money.
The British methods of enforcing payment were certainly harsh.
In 1779 Chait Singh asked that the payment should be limited to
that year and his "contumacy" was punished by an order to pay
the whole in one sum instead of in instalments. When again he asked
for an indulgence of six or seven months, he was told that if he failed
to meet the original demand he would be treated as though he had
refused altogether. He urged that his agreement with the Company
should have exempted him from all contributions beyond the nor-
mal tribute. Troops were then ordered to march into his territory,
and an extra charge of £2000 was made against him for their
expenses.
In 1780, on the same day that he paid the last instalment of the
third £50,000, an entirely new demand was made upon him that he
should provide the Company with 2000 cavalry, altbergh when the
Company took over the sovereignty of Benares in 1775, he had been
merely recommended to maintain a body of that number of horse,
## p. 296 (#324) ############################################
296
CHAIT SINGH, OUDH BEGAMS, FAIZULLA KHAN
and was told that there would be "no obligation on him to do it". 1
Chait Singh replied that he was unable to spare so large a number.
The demand was then reduced to 1000. He mustered 500 horse and
500 infantry and sent a message to Hastings that these troops were
ready for his service. Chait Singh declared that he never received
an answer to this message, a statement which is almost certainly
accurate, for Hastings in his Narrative of the Insurrection practical-
ly admits it: “I do not know but it may be true. He had received
positive orders, and those had been repeated. It was his duty to
obey them, not to waste my time with letters of excuse". 2
Hastings now made up his mind to inflict upon Chait Singh the
immense fine of half a million sterling: "I was resolved to draw from
his guilt the means of relief to the Company's distress. . . . In a word
I had determined to make him pay largely for his pardon, or to exact
a severe vengeance for his past delinquency”. 3 Hastings was by this
time entirely his own master, for Wheler was the only councillor left
at Calcutta. An arrangement was made by which Hastings himself
was to go to Benares and settle the question as he deemed best, while
Wheler was to remain on duty in Bengal. The governor-general went
northward in July. Chait Singh met him at Baksar and abjectly
humbling himself, asked for pardon. Hastings refused to give him
any answer till his arrival at Benares. There he again refused to
grant him a personal interview and merely transmitted his demand
in writing. He received a letter from the raja, which to an impartial
judge would seem to err, if at all, in the direction of servility, but
which Hastings described as “Not only unsatisfactory in substance
but offensive in style”. 4
Though Hastings had taken with him only a weak escort, he
ordered Chait Singh to be put under arrest. The raja humbly submit-
ted but the troops, infuriated by the indignity placed upon their ruler
in his own capital, suddenly rose and massacred a company of British
sepoys with their officers. Chait Singh, fearing for the consequences,
escaped in the turmoil and joined his rebellious army. Hastings was
in the most imminent danger and had to fly for safety to Chunar.
There he showed his customary coolness and presence of mind,
rallied all available forces to his aid and drove back his enemy. Chait
Singh, maintaining his innocence of the massacre, was hunted over
the Ganges and fled to Gwalior. His dominions were sequestrated
and were conferred upon a nephew, the tribute at the same time
being raised from £225,000 to £400,000. The council at Calcutta, now
consisting of Wheler and Macpherson, were obviously embarrassed
in their attempts to defend and ratify these proceedings of their
chief. They felt bound to ask themselves certain questions, first,
"Where were the Governor-General's particular instructions for
1 Reports from Committee of the House of Commons, v, 489.
2 Warren Hastings, A Narrative of the Insurrrection which happened in
the Zamindary of Benares, p. 27. Idem, p. 9
4 Idem, p. 19.
3
## p. 297 (#325) ############################################
CHAIT SINGH'S TENURE
297
such extraordinary demands upon Chait Singh? ” To this they replied
that "he was fully authorised by the general tenor of his instructions”
and that in not requiring more particular injunctions “there was a
delicacy in the mode he preferred and it imposed a greater respon-
sibility. " Their second question was, "Why was Chait Singh put in
arrest when he offered to make every concession? ” to which they
replied that nothing but arrest could have convinced Chait Singh of
Hastings's determination. Their third question was "Whether there
was not a compact between him and the Company which specified that
he was only to pay them a certain annual tribute? ” They agreed that
this “involves much argument”, but they accept Hastings's own
version of the sanad or original agreement with Chait Singh given
in his Narrative. They admit that his actions "certainly precipitated
the storm from the cloud in which it had gathered", and that these
acts “judges at a distance, judges unoppressed with the actual
embarrassments of this government, may with great speciousness of
argument condemn". 1 Their attitude suggests a certain uneasiness,
together with an obvious desire to defend the governor-general. We
must deal here very shortly with certain technical and legal points
which were discussed at immense length in the impeachment. The
first is whether Chait Singh was an independent raja or a mere
zamindar. The fact was that though he undoubtedly had a zamindari
status, he had a very real measure of independence and quite an
exceptional position. Hastings had committed himself in the past to
the view that he was far more than a zamindar, but this question
clearly does not affect the main point at issue, which is whether Chait
Singh, whatever his eaxct degree of dependency upon the British,
was treated with fairness and mercy. In any case, as Grey pointed
.
out in the impeachment, Hastings's defenders were impaling them-
selves upon the horns of a dilemma, if they maintained that Chait
Singh was a mere zamindar and at the same time that the demand
made upon him was justifiable. In that case the exaction ought to
have taken the form of a general universal tax levied on all the
zamindars under the Company's rule; but it was directed only against
Chait Singh. Hastings had admitted that "there was no other person
in the situation of Chait Singh",? which was really fatal to the "mere
zamindar" theory. The second question is whether the Company had
not bound itself to levy no contribution upon him beyond his normal
tribute or rent of £225,000. It would take too long to discuss this
question in all its detail, but there is no doubt of the technical point
that such a promise had been definitely given in 1775. A later grant,
it is true, of 1776, contained the words that "all former sanads had
become null and void", and it was upon this fact that Hastings tried
to base a technical defence; but it is clear that Chait Singh had
1 Forrest, Selections from the State Papers in the Foreign Department, m,
830-2.
2 Bond, Speeches in the Trial of Warren Hastings, I, 328.
>
## p. 298 (#326) ############################################
298
CHAIT SINGH, OUDH BEGAMS, FAIZULLA KHAN
objected, as he had every right to do, to the insertion of these words,
and that the grant was altered accordingly. Hastings also claimed
that:
it [is] a right inherent in every government to impose, such assessments as it
judges expedient for the common service and protection of all its subjects; and
we are not precluded from it by any agreement subsisting between the Raja
and this government. 1
These Asiatic views naturally exposed Hastings to the attacks of
Burke.
A third question whether Chait Singh was in rebellion against the
Company hardly deserves examination. It is perfectly certain that,
until his troops broke out in detestation of the treatment to which
their ruler was subjected, the idea of rebellion had never dawned
upon the raja. The truth is that Hastings in his desperate need for
supplies allowed himself to depart from his usually generous and
kindly attitude towards Indian powers. Whatever the legal rights
and wrongs of the matter, no sane person can deny that Hastings's
treatment of the unfortunate raja was merciless and vindictive. This
can be illustrated by one incident which occurred in the year 1780.
In that year after the demand for a third sum of £50,000 had been
made, Chait Singh sending a confidential agent to Calcutta offered
Hastings a present of about £20,000. Hastings at first refused it,
which was of course the only proper course to take, for the sum was
meant as a bribe to save Chait Singh from the larger amount of
£50,000. If it was right to levy the latter sum, it was unquestionably
most improper to receive the former. But Hastings after a few days,
being in serious need of money to equip an expedition against Sindhia,
accepted the money. We need not here consider the unconstitutional
nature of his act in taking such sums without the knowledge of nis
council, the difficulties in which he involved himself by representing
the money as a gift from his private estate or the unfortunate view of
money transactions which the whole affair implies; but it is difficult
to understand how any man of ordinary feeling and consideration
for his fellow-creatures could accept the proffered gift of £20,000
and then immediately exact the larger sum of £50,000; confront his
suppliant with a further demand for troops, and, on the ground that
the demand was not met, proceed to levy a fine of £500,000. There
seems no doubt, as Sir Alfred Lyall points out and as Hastings's own
language shows, that the governor-general had never quite forgiven
Chait Singh for having in the crisis of 1777 sent an emissary to make
favour with Clavering.
Quite apart from the morality of the transaction, Hastings lies
open to criticism in regard to the policy of it. He has been justified,
after all other defences
have been surrendered, on the ground that the
1 Reports from Committees of the House of Commons, v, 463.
## p. 299 (#327) ############################################
CONDITION OF BENARES
299
a
political situation was so serious as to justify any means of obtaining
money. The answer to this is that he obtained none, and, what is
more, placed his own valuable life in the utmost peril. By his im-
prudent action in arresting Chait Singh he was responsible for the
uprising of the people of Benares; the raja escaped with part of his
wealth-the amount he took with him was in all probability grossly
exaggerated—and the rest of it amounting to twenty-three lakhs of
rupees was seized by the troops at Bijaigarh who promptly proceeded
to divide it up amongst themselves.
This was largely due to an
indiscreet letter of Hastings himself which encouraged the army to
claim the prize money. The immediate result therefore on the finan-
cial side was that the Company incurred the expense of the military
operations that ensued. For the moment they got nothing, and it was
an immediate subvention that was required. Hastings afterwards
boasted, “I lost the zemindari with the rent of 22 lakhs; I recovered
it with a revenue of 40”. 1 But this only applied of course to the
future, and as a matter of fact for a long time the augmented revenue
(partly owing to the simultaneous occurrence of a famine) could not
be raised. Two successive ministers of finance were dismissed be-
cause they failed to produce it. All the evidence shows that it was a
very long time before Benares recovered from the heavy exactions
made upon it. Hastings, with a curious detachment which often pre-
vented him from seeing, or at any rate from acknowledging the
consequences of his own actions, himself bears witness to the desola-
tion of the country without apparently the least apprehension that he
was in any way responsible for it. In June, 1784, he wrote that he
would avoid Benares on his way back to Calcutta, "for I underwent
the persecution of mobs of complainants from Buxar to Joosee in my
way thither, and there is now a little mob parading even at my gate”. ?
In 1788 Lord Cornwallis sent Jonathan Duncan as a commissioner to
report on the condition of Benares. His report dealt one by one with
the districts of the province and is a most serious indictment of the
treatment meted out to Benares. In one district it is said that a third
of the land is uncultivated. In another for about twelve or fourteen
miles, "the whole appeared one continual waste as far as the eye
could reach”. In a third in a stretch of about twelve miles “not above
twenty fields of cultivated ground are to be seen: all the rest being
as far as the eye can reach, one general waste of long grass”. The
report adds significantly that this falling off in cultivation is said
to have happened in the course of a few years, that is, since the
late raja's expulsion. 3
Hastings having failed, as we have seen, to obtain any money from
Chait Singh had to seek for another source of supply. The nawab of
Oudh, Asaf-ud-daula, owed the Company at this time, for arrears of
1 Gleig, op. cit. II, 421.
2 Idem, III, 185.
8 Minutes of the Evidence in the Trial of Warren Hastings, pp. 261-2.
## p. 300 (#328) ############################################
300
CHAIT SINGH, OUDH BEGAMS, FAIZULLA KHAN
subsidy, about fifteen lakhs of rupees, and he professed that he had
no means of discharging the debt. His mother and grandmother,
the begams or princesses of Oudh, had inherited from the late nawab
large jagirs or landed estates and a treasure amounting it is said to
about £2,000,000. The nawab had long desired to get control of this
wealth and claimed that it was unjustly withheld from him. The will
had never been produced and it was claimed that by the Muham-
madan law the begams had no right to inherit so large a proportion
of the late ruler's property. In any case, it was said, this property
was really part of the wealth of the sovereign of the country and the
first claim upon it ought to have been the late nawab's debt to the
Company. All this was no doubt largely true, but in 1775 the widow
of Shuja-ud-daula, on the urgent representation of the British
Resident, agreed to pay her son £300,000 in addition to £250,000
already given to him, on condition that he and the Company
guaranteed that no further demand should ever be made upon her.
The guarantee was given. In 1781 Asaf-ud-daula, urged on thereto
by the Resident, as is clear from the private correspondence between
Hastings and Middleton, asked that he might be allowed to resume
the estates and seize the treasure of the begams. Hastings in sore
need of money agreed to the proposal and withdrew the Company's
protection from the begams. At this point the nawab, who had
probably never desired to seize the treasure, and was afraid, as the
Resident said, of the "uncommonly violent temper of his female
relations”, began to hang back, and had henceforward to be steadily
driven on by the British authorities to avail himself of the opportunity
thus given him. In December, 1781,. Hastings wrote to Middleton,
"You must not allow any negotiations or forbearance, but must
prosecute both services until the begams are at the entire mercy of
the nawab”. 1 In January, 1782, he writes to say that he had hoped
the nawab would have immediately entered upon the measures
agreed upon, but "after having long waited, with much impatience,
for this effect, I was apprised . . . that the nawab, from what cause
I know not, had shown a great reluctance to enter on this business”.
He tells the council that if the Resident cannot carry out the instruc-
tions, "I would myself proceed to Lucknow, and afford the nawab
any personal assistance for carrying them into execution . . . I dread
the imbecility and irresolution, which too much prevail in the nawab's
councils”. Hastings refers to "the pressing letters which I have
written to the nawab, the strong injunctions which I have repeated
to the Resident”. 2 Middleton replied that “the temporising and
indecisive conduct of the nawab seem to promise an issue very
different from that expected in your commands”. 3 Hastings, however,
was not to be deterred from his object by the unwillingness of
1 Forrest, Selections from the State Papers in the Foreign Department,
III, 950.
2 Report from Committees of the House of Commons, vi, 537.
3. Idem, p. 538.
9
>
## p. 301 (#329) ############################################
THE BEGAM'S CASE
301
the nawab or the shrinking from strong measures of his representative,
and in February we find him writing to Scott that he had been
compelled to rouse Middleton's activity "by letters written in a style
of the greatest severity". 1
Middleton, not having satisfied Hastings as sufficiently energetic
in applying coercion, was superseded as Resident by Bristow, and
Bristow wrote in June :
The begam complains that having no pension or jagir she now subsists, her
family and herself, with the greatest difficulty. . . . Previous to my arrival her
eunuchs were kept for many months in confinement, and led out to corporal
punishment. . . . These measures failed, and you have before you the opinions
given by Major Gilpin . . . that all that force could do has been done. 2
The above quotations are perhaps sufficient to meet the theory
that Hastings was not responsible for what his agents were doing at
Faizabad and that the latter were merely carrying out the wishes of
the nawab. As a matter of fact the nawab was a reluctant party
throughout, and Hastings asks that a very severe rebuke should be
given to his minister for having assumed a very unbecoming tone of
refusal, reproach and resentment in opposition to measures recom-
mended by me and even to acts done by my authority”. As to
the actual treatment inflicted on the begam's two ministers, they
were imprisoned from January to December, 1782, and they were for
a time deprived of food and put in irons. It seems doubtful whether
flogging was actually inflicted.
Finally in December, 1782, they paid over large sums of money
and were released. The British officer who had charge of them wrote:
"I wish you had been present at the enlargement of the prisoners.
The quivering lips, the tears of joy stealing down the poor men's
cheeks was a scene truly affecting". 1
The justification put forward by Hastings for tearing up the
Company's guarantee was that the begams had supported the rising
of Chait Singh and were in rebellion against the British Government.
The answer to this appears to be that, even if it were entirely true,
the proper course would have been to confront the begams with the
charge, produce the evidence and demand proofs of innocence, not
to cancel the treaty and cast them to the tender mercies of the nawab,
or rather to those of the British Resident.
The evidence for the alleged rebellion is conflicting. It depends
upon the affidavits taken by Sir Elijah Impey, in his injudicious
attempt to support the governor-general, the statements of Colonel
Hannay and his officers, and those of Wheler and others. The
affidavits are worthless. Sir James Stephen points out that only ten
1 Gleig, op. cit. I, 449.
2 Forrest, Selections from the State Papers in the Foreign Department,
IDT, 969.
Idem, p. 982.
* Bond, Speeches in the Trial of Warren Hastings, 1. 107.
8
## p. 302 (#330) ############################################
302
CHAIT SINGH, OUDH BEGAMS, FAIZULLA KHAN
a
of them mention the begams and then only on hearsay, and if they
are to be accepted at all, most of them equally inculpate the nawab
himself-an awkward fact which was ignored by Hastings and the
council. The evidence of Colonel Hannay can only be accepted with
many reservations; he was in the service of the nawab and acquired
a large fortune by questionable means. The country was no doubt
in a state of disturbance and Hannay and his colleagues would be
interested, as Mill suggests, in finding for these disturbances some
cause other than their own malversations. The third piece of evidence,
and the strongest, is the statement of Wheler, an honest man, that
he believed the begams were really stirring up a rebellion. Against
the theory of the defection of the begams, is, first of all, the extreme
improbability of their taking any part in any serious movement
against the British Government. Even those who afterwards adopted
the charge, wrote and spoke during the events as though such a thing
were impossible. For instance, in a letter from Middleton to Hastings
on 18 January, 1782, the phrase occurs, "The reliance which not-
withstanding the part I have avowed and acted with respect to her
she probably placed in the support and mediation of our Govern-
ment". 1 Further, in all the correspondence that passed between
Hastings and Wheler at the time, there is no mention at all of any
rebellion. The only question is how soon the money could be exacted
from the begam and her ministers. In the private correspondence
too between Middleton, Impey and Hastings there is nothing to lead
one to suppose that the money was being levied as a fine for an
insurrection. It seems probable that the charge of rebellion was ex
post facto, made when it was found necessary to present a justification
for the whole business. It was easy enough to do this, because under
the wretched government of the nawab there was always an endemic
insurrection going on in Oudh, the unfortunate rajas who owned
him as their suzerain being frequently in revolt against his oppres-
sions. In any case we must be fair enough to admit that the treatment
meted out to Chait Singh, whatever its justification, was sufficient to
make any Indian power adopt measures for its own protection. The
truth is that, making every possible allowance for Hastings's financial
difficulty, and granting for purposes of argument that the begams
were quite willing to stir up every kind of trouble for him, we must
yet agree that it was a sordid, shabby and sorry business. Before we
leave the subject a curious episode must be mentioned. We have
seen that Hastings in 1780 took a present of £20,000 from Chait
Singh while engaged in pressing him for money. In almost exactly
the same way in 1781, he was offered and accepted £100,000 from
the nawab of Oudh. He employed it in the Company's service and
then after a considerable delay and some amazing manipulation of
the accounts, he reported the matter to the directors, and made the
1 Minutes of the Evidence, p. 820.
## p. 303 (#331) ############################################
QUESTION OF PRESENTS
303
astonishing request that they should present it to himself as a token
of their approval. We need not concern ourselves here with the
decency or taste of his suggestion to the directors—the suggestion we
must remember of a man whose official salary with allowances was
about £30,000_but the transaction throws a vivid light on Hastings's
laxity of view on all monetary transactions. The money was un-
doubtedly offered by the nawab as a bribe to Hastings to release him
from the disagreeable task of coercing the begams. Hastings accepts
it but continues his policy nevertheless, an exact parallel to his
conduct in the Chait Singh case. The whole proceeding was kept
secret from the council, a most unconstitutional act. If the money
had been taken at all, it ought to have been accepted as a mere in-
stalment of the debt due to the Company. In truth there is no defence
at all for the acceptance of these sums. Modern historians sometimes
write as though the practice was defensible, if it can be proved that
Hastings spent the money in the public service. But the Regulating
Act had forbidden presents absolutely, for the sake of Indian princes.
The whole theory underlying them was highly objectionable. Either
the giver obtained some special favour from the government, which
means corruption, or he did not, which implies deception. The Select
Committee of 1781 said with justice that the generosity of the donors
“is found in proportion, not to the opulence they possess or to the
favours they receive, but to the indigence they feel, and the insults
they are exposed to",1 and Burke for once was surely fully justified
when he described presents from Indian rulers as "the donations of
misery to power, the gifts of wretchedness to the oppressors". 2
Hastings we must admit seems to have had a blind spot in his mind
as regards money matters.
A third case of Hastings's financial operations with an Indian
ruler must be mentioned as it throws considerable light on the other
two. We have explained how at the end of the Rohilla War the only
chieftain of that race left in possession of territory was Faizulla Khan
of Rampur. A peace had been made between him and the nawab of
Oudh. By it he was to retain not more than 5000 troops and if the
nawab was at war he was to "send two or three thousand men
according to his ability":3 Faizulla Khan proved himself an able
and vigorous ruler, as Hastings some years later freely admitted.
Under him the country prospered and the people were contented.
In February, 1778, there were some rumours that he was maintaining
an unnecessarily large army. Middleton, Resident in Oudh, said that
he might well have acted in this way owing to the injustice and
oppression of the nawab, but the commissioner who was sent down
to Rampur to investigate reported that Faizulla Khan had “preserved
1 Reports from Committees of the House of Commons, v7, 585.
? Bond, Speeches in the Trial of Warren Hastings, I, 70.
8 Reports from Committees of the House of Commons, VI, 22.
## p. 304 (#332) ############################################
304
CHAIT SINGH, OUDH BEGAMS, FAIZULLA KHAN
3
every article of his treaty inviolate”. 1 Faizulla Khan was, as a matter
of fact, one of the very small band of Indian rulers like Ranjit Singh,
who formed a great admiration for the British nation and recognised
once and for all the advantage of trusting them. It is rather a lament-
able reflection that he was very nearly entangled and ruined in the
policy of Hastings. He asked that the treaty which Champion had
made between him and the nawab might now receive the Company's
own ratification, on the ground that it was “the only power in which
he had confidence, and which he could look up to for protection”. ?
The council agreed to his proposal and a special treaty was presented
to him. Soon afterwards Faizulla Khan, whose treaty only bound
him to assist the nawab, on a hint from Middleton offered to lend
the Company 2000 horse. He was formally thanked for this mark of
his faithful attachment to the Company and the English nation.
In November, 1780, Hastings obliged the nawab of Oudh to write
to Faizulla Khan requiring him to furnish “the quota of troops
stipulated by treaty . . . being 5000 horse". It is charitable to assume
that in the original demand Hastings had simply made a mistake
about the terms of his treaty. But this excuse could not be made for
his subsequent action, for Faizulla Khan replied civilly and moderately
pointing out that he was only bound to furnish 2000 or 3000 troops,
not necessarily horse, "according to his ability", and offering to dis-
charge his liabilities to the full by sending 2000 horse and 1000 foot.
It has been well pointed out that if he had been able to provide 5000
horse he might have been charged with breaking the other article
in the treaty which prevented him from maintaining more than that
number as his total army. Hastings recorded a minute that Faizulla
Khan had "evaded the performance of . . . the treaty” 4 which was
of course a direct falsehood. He then in March, 1781, slightly
mitigating his demand, sent a deputation requiring the delivery of
3000 cavalry. As Faizulla Khan firmly but politely maintained his
former position, Hastings made a formal protest against him for
breaking the treaty and gave the nawab of Oudh permission to re-
sume his lands. That Hastings knew perfectly well that the treaty
had not been broken is proved by the amazing minute which he laid
before the council at Calcutta :
The conduct of Faizulla Khan, in refusing the aid demanded, though not
an absolute breach of treaty was evasive and uncandid . . . so scrupulous an
attention to literal expression, when a more liberal interpretation would have
been highly useful and acceptable to us, strongly marks his unfriendly dispo-
sition, though it may not impeach his fidelity. 5
Even at this distance of time the thought that a British administrator
could have written such words arouses a flush of shame and it may
1 Reports from Committees of the House of Commons, VI, 24.
2 Idem, p. 24.
3 Idem, 27.
• Idem, p. 29.
% Idem, p. 31.
## p. 305 (#333) ############################################
CHANGES IN OUDH
305
safely be surmised that such a justification for charging a ruler with
disaffection has never been offered before or since. Faizulla Khan
escaped ruin partly because Hastings, it is to be hoped with a sense
of compunction, postponed for a time the execution of the decree
against him, and partly because before it was put into force the
directors of the Company much to their honour sent a stern dispatch
condemning the whole business and forbidding Hastings to go any
further in the matter.
Hastings's final activities in India were devoted to an attempt at
reconstruction in Benares and Oudh. Bristow had not succeeded in
recovering the Company's balances from that incorrigibly insolvent
debtor, the nawab of Oudh, and his own financial transactions seem
to have been open to serious criticism. The nawab himself desired,
or more probably had been ordered by Hastings to ask for, the recall
of the Resident, and the abolition of the residency. Hastings may
have been right in demanding a complete change of system in Oudh,
but it must be confessed that his action in the matter was curiously
tortuous, and no quite adequate explanation of his conduct has ever
been offered. He had himself given Bristow the strictest orders to
obtain a complete control over the government of Oudh. Soon after-
wards he proposed to the council that Bristow should be recalled for
having attempted to tyrannise over the nawab, and that the nawab
himself, and his minister, Haidar Beg Khan, whom he had in the past
severely criticised, should jointly be security for the Company's debts.
The council at first defended Bristow on the ground that he had only
been endeavouring to carry out his instructions, and that Haidar Beg
Khan had consistently opposed all reforms. Finally, however, with
great reluctance they accepted Hastings's proposal and agreed that
he should proceed to Lucknow to carry out the change. Hastings
arrived at the nawab's capital on 27 March, 1784, and attacked his
new task with characteristic courage and buoyancy. "It is my ambi-
tion”, he wrote,. “to close my government with the redemption of
a great government, family, and nation from ruin . . . it is the boldest
enterprise of my public life, but I confidently hazard the conse-
quences. ” 1 It is generally said that he was very successful, but there
is not much evidence of it; he merely won a respite for the time by
a heavy mortgage on the future. He conciliated the nawab by his
dominating personality, by removing the residency, and by restoring
the jagirs to the begams-an act of restitution which had been ordered
by the court of directors. He also claimed to have "adjusted all the
disputed accounts between the Nabob: Vizier and the Company”. 2 The
position in Oudh was no doubt easier for the moment, but as soon
as Hastings had departed, the hollowness of his reforms was revealed.
It then appeared that, if the residency was removed, there had been
established in its place an "agency of the governor-general", which
1 Gleig, op. cit. m,
153.
* Idem, p. 184.
20
## p. 306 (#334) ############################################
306
CHAIT SINGH, OUDH BEGAMS, FAIZULLA KHAN
interfered quite as drastically in the affairs of Oudh, and was a still
greater burden on its revenues. Whereas the expense of Bristow's
residency had been £64,202 per annum, the cost of the new agency
was over £112,000, of which £22,000 was the salary of the agent.
As soon as Cornwallis came out, the nawab. approached him with
exactly the same complaint that he had addressed to Hastings, that
the burden upon his country was insupportable. As for the alleged
reform of the finances, Cornwallis writes: "I cannot express how
much I was concerned . . . to be witness of the disordered state of his
finances and government, and of the desolated appearance of the
country. The evils were too alarming to admit of palliation". 1
In regard to Benares, Hastings laid before the council a scheme
for securing the revenues, for removing incapable and oppressive
officials, and for safeguarding the tenancy rights of the ryots; but even
his unremitting defender Gleig admits, that in the regeneration of
Benares he was not so immediately successful as in the case of Oudh. ”
No real reformation was possible, so long as the British Resident was
allowed to amass, exclusive of his official salary, an income of £40,000
a year, and Cornwallis could only describe the whole position there
as “a scene of the grossest corruption and mismanagement”.
