The grant was, Hastings
said, “a presumptuous gift of what was not his to give", and
The sword which gave us the dominion of Bengal must be the instrument of
its preservation; and if.
said, “a presumptuous gift of what was not his to give", and
The sword which gave us the dominion of Bengal must be the instrument of
its preservation; and if.
Cambridge History of India - v5 - British India
The
position is shown with special clearness by the fact that the Company
could not, till the treaty of 1757, obtain the right of minting coin at
Calcutta, and by the jurisdiction of the law courts there. The Com-
pany's criminal court, established by the royal charters of 1727 and
1753, was limited to Europeans. Indians were tried in the zamindar's
court. In theory all sentences of death should have been submitted
to the faujdar of Hugli and the Nazim at Murshidabad before being
put into execution. " In practice this does not seem to have been
done; but the Calcutta Council was clearly very cautious of putting
Muhammadans to death. We must discount Bolts's story, that they
were flogged to death instead of being hanged, out of deference to
Muslim opinion; but one case at least is on record, where the
Muhammadan members of a party of criminals were spared for fear
of the nawab's interference.
This position at Madras and Calcutta was profoundly changed by
the course of events which may be dated from the War of the Austrian
Succession. Madras was the first to be affected. During the war it
.
passed into the hands of the French by right of conquest, in defiance
1 Love, op. cit. I, 345. “Chinapatam" is Madras.
? Committee of Secrecy, 1773, Sixth Report, pp. 2 and 11.
3 Bolts, Considerations, 1, 80.
4 Long, Selections, p. 51. .
## p. 591 (#619) ############################################
THE CARNATIC
591
of the prohibitions of the nawab; it remained in French hands during
the war, although Dupleix agreed to make a formal recognition of
the nawab's position by flying his flag over the place for a week. '
At the end of the war it was restored to the English by the Treaty
of Aix-la-Chapelle. From that time the English might have claimed
to hold it independently of any Indian prince. However, they were
on the best of terms with Muhammad 'Ali, whom they were seeking
to establish as against the French nominee; and so, in 1752, as a mark
of gratitude the quit-rent was abolished, and with it went the last
fragment of dependence upon an Indian prince at Madras. ?
That, however, only applied to Madras itself and a very narrow
strip of land round its walls. The rest of the country lay within the
undisputed control of the nawab under the nominal sovereignty of
Delhi. When, in 1780, the nawab applied to Hastings to secure a
settlement of outstanding questions, he was specially eager to secure
declarations from the English that he was hereditary prince of the
Carnatic, with full power over the administration of his country and
the right to nominate his successor, under the general protection of
the Company and the English nation. It is apparent that all thoughts
of the Moghul emperor have disappeared, although doubtless his
name was still recited in the Friday prayers at Arcot, and for that
matter at Madras. In fact the very application shows that the Com-
pany, and not the emperor, was now suzerain. In 1792 the old nawab
died and was succeeded by the son whom for so many years he had
striven to disinherit; but the succession took place with the approval
of the Company. Finally, ten years later, for reasons which have been
explained in a previous chapter, on the next demise of the nawabship,
the Company intervened decisively. Its representative refused to
recognise any succession except on terms which at a stroke reduced
the nawab to the same position to which the nawab of Bengal had only
fallen after a term of years. He became a pensioner. On this occasion
we hear no mention of Delhi or the emperor. Sovereign powers over
the Carnatic passed to the Company, not indeed by conquest, but
in virtue of a long-established political situation, in which the
Company was in fact, though not in name, the overlord. For three
generations the old title and dignity were allowed to survive; but in
1855, in the time of Dalhousie, they were deliberately extinguished,
as a "semblance of royalty without any of the power is a mockery
of authority which must be pernicious”. 5
The case of Bengal was much more complicated, partly because
of the inferior status from which the Company set out, partly because
4
1 P. 122 supra.
2 Madras Public Consultations, 31 August, 1752.
3 Requests of the Nawab Walajah of the governor-general, Madras Military
Consultations, 22 August, 1781, p. 2280.
4 P. 361 supra.
5 Lee-Warner, Dalhousie, II, 140.
## p. 592 (#620) ############################################
592
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
1
1
it offered the first example of something like territorial acquisitions
on a large scale, and partly because of the conflicts and hesitations
of the crown and Company in England. The status of zamindar
persisted at Calcutta until the year 1756. But when at the close of
that year. Clive recovered the place, we may suppose that the logic
of events had already begun to modify the position. It was recovered
by force; and we may infer that when the English returned, they
returned no longer as humble dependents of the nawab. The change
is clearly indicated in the treaty which Clive made with Siraj-ud-
daula on 9 February following. In future the place might be fortified
as the English thought proper; the privilege of a mint was granted;
and the English nation and Company agreed to live on good terms
with the nawab so long as he observed the treaty. The theory of
Moghul sovereignty still stood, but a large breach had been made in
it. The breach was further enlarged when the English proceeded to
overthrow the ruling nawab and set up another. In the treaty with
Mir Ja'far, although the sovereignty over the country, in whosesoever
hands it lay, was not formally impaired, the English were nevertheless
established as an imperium in imperio with the right of doing them-
selves justice. The revolution of 1760 was designed to strengthen
the nawab and led, as we have seen, to a conflict between the person
invested with the sole rights of administration in the province, and
the corporation controlling the only efficient military force therein.
Again the nawab was overthrown and Mir Ja'far restored, not as had
formerly been the case, with the aid and concurrence of his friends
and supporters, but by the mere act of the Calcutta Council. In 1763
this de facto power assumed the right of nominating the nawab's
principal minister, and in the same year, under Clive's Treaty of
Allahabad, it was invested with the right of revenue administration.
The formal sovereignty still lay where it had; but alongside of the
emperor and nawab there had sprung up a body which not only
possessed the sole military force in Bengal, but also had conquered
the province in 1763, had assumed the power of nominating the
nawab's chief officer, and was now invested with the right of collect-
ing the revenues. It was an indefinite situation which could not
readily be brought within the scope of any western formulae.
The situation, perplexing as it was, was prolonged by the hesita-
tion of the English authorities to assume formal sovereignty over the
territories which in fact they controlled. Neither the crown nor the
Company was prepared, though for very different reasons, to lay
claim to territorial sovereignty in India. The Company feared that
any such claims would provoke or hasten interference
by the ministry;"
the crown was unwilling to assail the legal rights of the Company. 4
i Hill, Bengal in 1756-7, II, 215 sqq.
2 P. 171 supra.
3 Verelst, op. cit. p. 81.
4 E. g. Chatham to Shelburne, 24 May, 1773 (Chatham Correspondence, iv,
264).
## p. 593 (#621) ############################################
CROWN AND COMPANY
693
Indeed, the establishment of such a position was the precise motive
with which Clive seems in 1765 to have desired the diwanni of Bengal
rather than any territorial cession, which could have been obtained
just as readily. It placed the Company in a strong tactical position
alike as regards foreign powers and as regards the government at
home.
This had not always been Clive's aim. After Plassey he had sought
to induce Pitt to take over the government of the Company's pos-
sessions in despair of ever seeing that body establish good govern-
ment. But Pitt had then been reluctant to intervene in so complicated
a position. How complicated it was may be seen from an opinion
delivered by the law-officers on 24 December, 1757, on the Company's
memorial praying for the grant of all booty and conquests made in
India.
"In respect to such places”, they say, "as have been or shall be acquired by
treaty or grant from the Mogul or any of the Indian princes or governments,
your Majesty's letters patent are not necessary, the property of the soil vesting
in the Company by the Indian grants, subject only to your Majesty's rights of
sovereignty over the settlements as English settlements, and over the inhabi-
tants, as English subjects who carry with them your Majesty's laws wherever
they form colonies. . . . In respect to such places as have lately been acquired
or shall hereafter be acquired by conquest, the property as well as the dominion
vests in your Majesty by virtue of your known prerogative, and consequently
the Company can only derive a right to them by your Majesty's grant. . . . ”2
But although the Company could not acquire territory by conquest,
it could nevertheless "cede conquests made upon Indians", since by
its charters it had power to make war and peace with them. In 1765
the legal view undoubtedly was that British sovereignty was estab-
lished in Calcutta, in the 24-Parganas, and in the districts of Burdwan,
Midnapur and Chittagong ceded by Mir Kasim, but not in the
diwanni districts, a result which accorded well with the Company's
policy of that time. The question as to where and at what point
Indian inhabitants of places subject to English sovereignty became
English subjects does not seem to have been considered, as is clear
enough from the uncertain and ambiguous language of the Regulat-
ing Act. It was declared at Calcutta in 1773 that Sepoy officers were
“not. . . subjects of Britain, but aliens and natives of Hindustan”. 3
From the point of view of the ministry the question was clearly
two-fold : internal as regarded the Company, external as regarded
the French and other foreign nations. It will be most convenient
to sketch the development of policy under these two heads, and
finally to describe the relations between the Company's government
in India and the Moghul emperor—the de facto and the de jure
wielders of Indian dominion.
1 Malcolm, Life of Clive, , 119 sqq. ; Williams, Life of Chatham, 1, 28-9.
? Public Record Office, C. O. 77-19; cf. an undated and unsigned minute, ap.
Chatham MSS, I, 99.
8 Forrest, Selections from the State Papers of the Foreign Department, I, 89.
38
## p. 594 (#622) ############################################
594
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
The first direct exercise of sovereign power in India by the crown
since the cession of Bombay to the Company resulted from an inter-
national document, the Treaty of Paris of 1763, in which both the
French and the English governments recognised Muhammad 'Ali as
nawab of the Carnatic and Salabat Jang as subahdar of the Deccan.
No one seems to have considered how far these stipulations were
consistent with the structure of the Moghul Empire. Indeed they
were at the time intended only to secure the peace between the two
European nations in India by preventing them from continuing to
support rival, princes in those regions. At a later time, however, the
clauses were put to a new use. The disputes between the crown and
the Company which came to a head in 1766-7 made the ministry
anxious to find some means by which it could learn how matters were
actually going in India. There was reason to distrust the execution
which the Company's servants had given to the treaty in the East;
and the upshot of the matter was that when the Company sent out
its supervisors to reform its Indian administration, the ministry sent
out in command of the squadron an officer vested with plenipotentiary
powers from the king to the princes of India. About the commission
of this officer there was much underhand work that ill became the
dignity of the ministry; the commission, for instance, was not com-
municated to the Company; and so when the commodore arrived in
India he found that the Company's governments knew nothing about
the powers that had been granted to him. The natural result was the
outbreak of violent disputes between the representative of the king's
majesty and the councils which exercised the powers of the Company.
These divided and undefined powers were bound to weaken and
impede, rather than to strengthen the conduct of affairs, and the
time had not yet come when the ministry was prepared to take a
decisive part in determining Indian policy. However, it is curious to
note that among the other duties of the plenipotentiary was included
a mission to the Moghul emperor, who had sent presents to George III
by the hands of Clive, and these, by some oversight, had never been
acknowledged. Commodore Lindsay was entrusted with a letter of
thanks from the king, whose titles were for the occasion strangely
inodified, obviously with a view to impressing the court of Delhi with
a due sense of the king's importance. "George III”, the letter is
headed, "King. . . Defender of the Christian faith. . . and Sovereign
of the Seas, etc. " 1 A generation later the same style was employed
in a letter addressed to the emperor of China.
The next step after this ill-concerted effort to interfere in the
Company's Indian administration was the Regulating Act of 1773.
That act takes for granted the existence of British sovereignty in
Calcutta and its immediate neighbourhood, but not apparently
"1
1 Weymouth to Lindsay, 14 September, 1769, and George III to the Moghul,
of the same date (Brit, Mus. Add. MSS, 18020; ff. 46 verso and 50 verso). .
## p. 595 (#623) ############################################
ACTS AND TREATIES
695
beyond. At best its language is hesitating and uncertain. A dis-
tinction appears between British subjects and the native-born in-
habitants. The India Act of 1784 leaves the question still untouched,
although it legislates for the full exercise of all sovereign powers in
territory that in 1773 was clearly not yet a part of the dominions of
the crown. The act of 1793 merely declared that all territorial
acquisitions and their revenues were to remain in the possession of
the East India Company for the next twenty years, thus leaving the
question of sovereignty still open. Not until 1813 do we find the claim
to sovereignty formally asserted. In the act renewing the Company's
privileges in that year the territorial acquisitions were continued
under its control "without prejudice to the undoubted sovereignty
of the crown of the United Kingdom, etc. in and over the same”.
But at what moment that sovereignty came into being still remained
a riddle.
Much the same attitude is displayed by the treaties concluded in
this period. At first the question of sovereignty is not raised except
in regard to the factories possessed by the European nations, and
which it was taken for granted formed part of their respective terri-
tories. Thus Article 11 of the Treaty of Paris declares,
Dans les Indes Orientales la Grande Bretagne restituera à la France. . . les
différents comptoirs que cette couronne possédait. . . Et sa majesté Très Chré-
tienne renonce à toute pretention aux acquisitions qu'elle avait faite sur la
côte de Coromandel et d'Orixa depuis le dit commencement de l'année 1749. . . .
Elle s'engage de plus à ne point ériger des fortifications et à ne point entretenir
des troupes dans aucune partie des états du soubah de Bengale. . . .
It is clearly implied that the English enjoyed a special position in
Bengal by the limitations which the French engaged to observe; but
neither then nor till long after was the least attempt made to define
the position by the use of any of the political terms employed in
Europe. The article in the Treaty of Versailles of 1783 even more
obviously evades the matter. After providing for the restoration of
the French factories in Bengal, it continues :
Et sa Majesté Britannique s'engage à prendre les mesures qui seront en
son pouvoir pour assurer aux sujets de la France dans cette partie de l'Inde,
comme sur la côte de Coromandel, et de Malabar, un commerce sûr, libre et
indépendant. . . .
In 1786-7, when troubles with the French in Bengal produced
renewed discussions in Europe, leading to the convention of 1787,
the most inconsistent language was used, showing that the English
still had not been able to make up their minds as to their position
in India. Thus the Committee of Secrecy writes to the Governor-
General in Council, 19 July, 1786, stating that the French could
hardly expect the benevolent intervention of the Company so long
as they assumed a position of independence and did not "acquiesce
in the general controuling power existing in the English Companv
## p. 596 (#624) ############################################
596
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
as Dewan of the provinces". 1 But in Paris, on 6 February, 1787, Eden,
who was negotiating the convention, took up a very different position
in an explication confidentielle which he delivered to Montmorin.
His proposals, he said, were intended,
sans rien faire qui soit censé déroger à la souverainté possessoire et exclusive
dont l'Angleterre jouit dans l'Inde, de donner à la France toutes les facilités
praticables, dans la vue de former un traité de commerce. . . . C'est un fait
incontestable que l'Anglettere possède tous les droits substantiels de la souve-
rainté dans les provinces de Bengale, Bahar, et Orixa. . . . C'est en supposant
cette qualité effective de la souverainté que les deux cours ont formés l'article
11 de traité de Paris et l'article 13 de celui de Versailles. . . . ?
The French, however, did not accept this doctrine, which can hardly
be read into the treaties mentioned without vigorous interpolation.
The position is clearly summed up in an unpublished letter of Corn-
wallis to the Committee of Secrecy, dated 16 November, 1786. "From
this complicated system”, he says, "founded on grants conferred and
powers assumed, of sovereignty exercised though not avowed, many
difficulties arise in all negotiations with foreign nations. ” 3
The Treaty of Amiens only dealt with India under a general
article, but the Treaty of Paris of 1814, and the convention with the
Netherlands of the same year, both place the position of the English
Government in India beyond question internationally. Both refer
specifically to the British sovereignty in India, which was then for
the first time acknowledged by the French and the Dutch. In this
connection, and as displaying the contrast which this treaty displays
with previous diplomatic language, a sentence from Article 12 of the
Treaty of Paris may be quoted :
Sa Majesté Britannique s'engage à faire jouir les sujets de sa Majesté Très
Chrétienne relativement au commerce et à la sûreté de leurs personnes et pro-
priétés dans les limites de la souverainté britannique sur le continent des
Indes, des mêmes facilités, privilèges et protection, qui sont à présent ou seront
accordés aux nations les plus favorisées.
Thus the claim put forward by the legislation of 1813 was in the
following year formally announced to the diplomatic world of Europe
and recognised by the two powers principally interested in the East.
We must now turn to see how in India itself the position of the
East India Company gradually developed. The obvious point of
departure is the Treaty of Allahabad, by which Clive secured for the
Company a grant of the diwanni, agreeing in return to pay to the
emperor twenty-six lakhs of rupees a year besides giving him posses-
sion of Allahabad and the revenues of the neighbouring country.
The emperor at the time when he made the grant was a fugitive from
his capital, without money, without troops, dependent on the English
for his daily bread. His grant gave them nothing which they could
1 India. Office, French in India, vol XII.
Idem.
8. Idem.
## p. 597 (#625) ############################################
THE BENGAL TRIBUTE
597
1
> 3
not very well have taken for themselves had they been so minded,
and Clive's reason for his generosity, as has been pointed out above,
referred not to the position of affairs in India but to the Company's
relations with the crown and the French.
The grant was, Hastings
said, “a presumptuous gift of what was not his to give", and
The sword which gave us the dominion of Bengal must be the instrument of
its preservation; and if. . . it shall ever cease to be ours, the next proprietor
will derive his right and possession from the same natural charter. 2
Holding these views Hastings was inevitably opposed to Clive's
settlement so far as it concerned the action of the governments in
India. Indeed, he had hardly taken over the government in Bengal
in 1772 before an opportunity arose for him to give effect to his ideas.
The emperor, Shah Alam, having quitted English protection at
Allahabad for Maratha protection at Delhi, Hastings decided to stop
payment of the Bengal tribute. “I think I may promise", he wrote,
“that no more payments will be made while he is in the hands of
the Mahrattas, nor, if I can prevent it, ever more. " 3 The refusal was
diplomatically placed to the account of the Bengal famine of 1769-70.
There followed an unceasing stream of letters from Delhi, in which
the emperor or one of his ministers called upon the English to
withdraw from their position, or at the least to lend the emperor
troops who might be paid out of the arrears. Hastings at last wrote,
“I must plainly declare that until the safety and welfare of these
provinces will admit of it, I cannot consent that a single rupee be
sent out of them which it is in my power to retain”. 4 The payment of
tribute was the one really crucial element in the relations between the
emperor and the rulers of the provinces. A governor might strike
coin and have Friday prayers read in the emperor's name; he
might pay handsomely to obtain the imperial confirmation of his
succession, and offer large sums for the continuance of his predecessor's
titles; but these things meant little except when they were accom-
panied by the regular remittance of the annual tribute, which alone
signified a real, living allegiance to the imperial power. Hastings's
refusal of tribute was in effect a declaration of the practical inde-
pendence of Bengal.
It was accompanied by another act which in its way was equally
significant. The districts of Kora and Allahabad were ceded to the
nawab of Oudh. Clive's arrangement by which they had been given
to the emperor might conceivably have been represented as obedience
to the monarch's commands. Not so the decision which dispossessed
the imperial revenue-officers and transferred the districts back to the
nawab of Oudh in return for fifty lakhs paid into the Company's
1 Minute, ap. Bengal Select Committee, 4 October, 1773.
2 Minute, loc. cit. 12 October, 1772.
3 Hastings to Purling, 22 March, 1772 (Monckton Jones, op. cit. p. 147).
+ Ilastings to Shah 'Alam, 13 September, 1773 (Forrest, op. cit. 1, 58).
## p. 598 (#626) ############################################
598
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
treasury. As if in order to make the position clearer still, Hastings
declined the title which the emperor offered him. In another way,
too, Hastings aimed at introducing English sovereignty, though
circumstances did not allow him to carry it into execution.
He
advocated the replacement of alliances between Indian princes and
the Company by alliances between them and the crown. The first
occasion on which he placed these ideas on paper seems to have been
in a letter to North of 26 February, 1775; 2 but from a later letter to
Elliot of 12 January, 1777, it appears that the subject must have been
discussed between him and Shuja-ud-daula when he visited Benares
in 1773. He states that the nawab was desirous of alliance with
George III and even offered to coin money in the name of the English
monarch. Hastings was still in favour of this project in 1777, and
thought it might be applied not only to Oudh but also to Berar.
Had this policy been carried into effect, it would have led to a formal
assertion of English paramountcy in India. But the directors, had it
even been proposed to them, would have objected to it as lessening
their importance, while the ministry of the time had no clear-cut
conception of its own purposes. The plan thus came to nothing, and
survives only as a project, foiled, like so many of Hastings's plans, ov
the opposition or the inertia of others.
While Hastings was thus bent on repudiating the emperor's
authority over Bengal, he was equally active in reducing even the
ostensible part played by that phantom the nawab in its internal
management-implanting, as he said, the authority of the Company
and the sovereignty of Great Britain in the constitution.
“The truth is”, he wrote to the Secret Committee on 1 September, 1772,
"that the affairs of the Company stand at present on a footing which can neither
last as it is nor be maintained on the rigid principles of private justice. You
must establish your own power, or you must hold it dependent on a superior,
which I deem to be impossible. " 4
In these ideas he was encouraged by the Company's decision
"to stand forth as diwan”. One of the guiding principles which
inspired the reforms of the period 1772-4 was to make Calcutta
the visible capital of the province. Thither was moved the chief
revenue-office, and thither went the appeals from the courts which
he established. "In a word", he claimed in 1773, "the sovereign
authority of the Company is firmly rooted in every branch of the
state. " 5
But in this he had out-run the intentions of his masters, the
directors, and their masters, the parliament and crown. Lawyers like
Thurlow might with brutal directness declare that in India existed no
1 Hastings to Shah 'Alam, 1 August, 1773 (Calendar of Persian Correspond-
ence, IV, 77).
2 Gleig, op. cit. I, 508.
3 Idem, u, 136.
4 Idem, I, 254.
5 Idem, p. 332.
## p. 599 (#627) ############################################
HASTINGS AND THE COUNCIL
599
powers or rights but force, and that it was "a country with no public
moral or faith". 1 But no one in England was yet ready to accept the
idea of filling with British sovereignty the void created by the disso-
lution of the Moghul Power. The vagueness of the Regulating Act
corresponded in its own way with the vagueness of the directors'
orders. They might resolve directly to administer the Bengal revenues
on reports that their Indian deputy was playing them false; but
though they enjoyed the powers they were not prepared to assume
the position of the masters of Bengal. When they received complaints,
for instance, that the French were refusing to obey the orders issued
in the nawab's name, they replied :
We direct that you afford the Country Government all necessary assistance
in the execution of such equitable laws as are or may be framed for the pro-
tection of the natives. . . . If the French persist in their contempt of the Nabob,
it is our order that you decline as much as possible entering into a discussion
of such of their complaints as shall be cognizable by the Nazim of the province,
for so long as the English pay attention to His Excellency, it cannot be expected
that other Europeans should be allowed to disregard him. . . .
So when Clavering and his followers arrived in India, and found that
Hastings had adopted a different policy, and above all when they
found the Supreme Court taking the same line, calling the nawab
"a man of straw", and demanding that the majority should make
oath that he was a sovereign independent prince, conducting his
own affairs independently of their government and capable of making
war and peace with Calcutta, though they were unable to make the
required affidavits they were strongly inclined to adopt, support, and
enforce the Company's views, reviving the phantom which Clive had
summoned up. Not impossibly the latter had urged this course on
Francis in some of those meetings which took place at Walcot shortly
before the majority sailed from England and which were full of evil
cmen for the relations between the governor-general and his new
colleagues. Hence their endeavour to maintain the fiction of the dual
government and to hide the authority of the East India Company.
Accordingly they insisted on re-establishing Muhammad Riza Khan
as deputy nazim and supported their decision by taunting Hastings
with neglect of the Company's intentions.
"The Governor roundly insists”, we read, "on the futility of attempting to
maintain a country government. . . . An old servant of the Company might at
least have treated their deliberate and invariable opinion with greater respect.
With regard to us, if our ideas on this subject had not entirely concurred with
theirs, and if we had not been convinced that in their circumstances it was the
only rational system they could pursue, we should still have thought it our
duty. . . to have adopted their doctrines. "
1 Thurlow's Opinion on Clive's Jagir Case.
2 Company to Bengal, 3 March, 1775, paras. 59 sqq.
: Bengal Secret Consultations, 29 February, 1776.
## p. 600 (#628) ############################################
600
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
Besides these thin and hollow declarations should be placed Hastings's
vigorous and (in this case) accurate language.
All the arts of policy cannot conceal the power by which these provinces
are ruled, nor can all the arts of sophistry avail to transfer the responsibility
of ihem to the Nabob, when it is as visible as the light of the sun that they
originate from our own government, that the Nabob is a mere pageant without
so much as the shadow of authority, and even his most consequential agents
receive their appointment from the recommendation of the Company and the
express nomination of their servants. 1
Absolute as the opposition appears, it is nevertheless deceptive.
The majority were ready to use any stick to beat Hastings with, even
if it was not one of their own growing; and although under the stress
of controversy they found themselves committed to the views set
down above, they had not always considered the dual system of
government that best adapted to the situation of Bengal. In a letter
written early in 1775 Francis had pointed out that under the system
which in the next year the majority advocated so heartily, the people
of Bengal had either two sovereigns or none, and that the only course
to follow was to declare the sovereignty of the king of Great Britain
over the whole of the provinces; and at this time his criticisms of
Hastings's conduct seem confined to the fact that in abolishing the
Moghul sovereignty he had not formally declared the British. ?
Francis had recorded similar sentiments in a minute of 8 March, 1775.
After this it is odd to find him, in a private, unpublished letter to
Lord North, declaring that the English should set about giving or
restoring an active constitution to the Moghul Empire. “The autho-
rity of the Emperor should be in a considerable degree restored and
means given him to support it. ” 3 The revival of the empire would
have been wholly inconsistent with English authority in Bengal.
It is worth noting that in this respect the policies of the English
and the French had been, and continued to be, diametrically opposed.
Dupleix and Bussy had consistently acted within the theory of the
empire. They had based their claims in Southern India on the
authority of Salabat Jang, as legitimate subahdar of the Deccan.
Even in the Seven Years' War, when matters were going ill for the
French, Bussy advocated summoning the subahdar's brother, Basalat
Jang, into the Carnatic, on the ground that the authority of his name
and connection with the subahdar would enable the French to collect
revenues where without him they could not raise a rupee. All
their intrigues of a later date included schemes to secure the influence
of the imperial name, as if that could give them a man more in
the field or a rupee more in the treasury. Down to the time of
Wellesley they continued to dream of reviving the empire in order
1 Hastings's Minute, ap. Bengal Secret Consultations, 7 December, 1775.
2 Francis to. North, February, 1775 (Parkes and Merivale, I, 27).
3 Same to same, 21 November, 1775 (Public Record Office, T 49-8).
## p. 601 (#629) ############################################
BROWNE'S MISSION
601
2
3
thereby to establish their own supremacy; and so obsessed were they
with this idea that some of them even attributed it to their English
rivals. 1
But Jean Law, the coolest head among them, saw better and more
clearly into the heart of things. In a mémoire composed in 1777 he
pointed out with incisive force that English security depended on the
existence of many independent princes, certain to be divided among
themselves, and so incapable of a unit-d attack on the foreigner;
but, if the government of Calcutta set to work to increase its power
under cover of re-establishing the Moghul Empire, it would be
following the only policy which would give every prince of India an
urgent motive for attacking it. ? The ideas with which Francis dallied
had occurred to many Englishmen before him—to Clive, who had
resolutely put them aside; to Vansittart; who had been willing to put
them into action but luckily had been prevented by circumstances.
Here the Company was in complete agreement with its servants'
actual policy. An attempt to restore the emperor at Delhi, the Com-
pany had written, "might bring on the total ruin of our affairs; and
we add that, should you be persuaded into so rash and dangerous
a measure, we shall deem you responsible for all the consequences”. ?
Hastings, however, was never adverse to modifying his policy, if
it seemed desirable, with all that freedom from the shackles of a
formal consistency which is the peculiar privilege of the despot. Not
that he ever weakened on the point of English sovereignty in Bengal,
but in 1782 he thought it desirable to re-enter into relations with
Delhi, and with that object had appointed Major James Browne to
be his agent at that place. Browne was first to visit the nawab of
Oudh and ascertain his views, since Hastings desired "to second and
assist his views [rather] than to be the principal or leader in any plan
that may be undertaken”. Aware that the emperor might take
advantage of the agent's appearance to raise once more the old
question of the tribute and Allahabad, Hastings instructed him to
avoid if possible the discussion of such unpleasant topics, "since it is
not in my power to grant either one or the other". The purpose of the
mission was rather to secure information than anything else. “Hitherto
we have known nothing of the political state of the court but from
foreign and suspected channels. Your first care must be to collect
the materials for a more complete and authentic knowledge,
only of Shah 'Alam's court but also of “the independent chiefs and
states whose territories border on his”. 4 This was then no revival of
the schemes of Vansittart, merely an extension of political relations to
1 Cf. Modave's Memorandum of 1774, ap. Barbé, Madec, p. 65.
2 Law, État politique de l'Inde en 1777, pp. 76-7.
8 Company to Bengal, 16 March, 1768.
4 Hastings to Browne, 20 August, 1782, ap. Bengal Secret Consultations, 10
September, 1783. A collection of papers bearing on the British relations with
Delhi forms Home Miscellaneous volume no. 336 at the India Office.
## p. 602 (#630) ############################################
602
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
a prince of exalted dignity and pretensions but of definitely circum-
scribed territorial power, and whose sovereignty, as Hastings observed
on a later occasion, “is universally acknowledged though the sub-
stance of it no longer exists".
Browne's mission led to no action of any kind; but on the occasion
of Hastings's final visit to Benares in 1784, he was brought into contact
with a fugitive prince, Mirza Jiwan Bakht, who had fled from Delhi
and was anxious for English or any other intervention to procure his
return. At this time Hastings was regarding with a speculative eyc
the rise of the Sikh power in Northern India, whence he predicted
the emergence of new dangers to the Company's possessions "if this
people is permitted to grow into maturity without interruption”.
He seems to have contemplated the possibility of affording assistance
to the prince with a view to checking the advances of the Sikhs; buć
preferred that Mahadaji Rao Sindhia should be committed to this
enterprise; indeed very shortly after this, on the occasion of the
murder of Afrasiab Khan, Sindhia did assume control of affairs at
Delhi; and this was the position of affairs when Hastings quitted
India early in 1785.
The degree in which the decay of the Moghul Empire was appa-
rent to and recognised by the people of India, and the aspect under
which the rising power of the East India Company appeared to them,
must have varied widely according to the class and the interests of the
observer. Princes such as the nawab of Oudh or the Nizam of
Hyderabad still made haste on their accession to obtain a formal
confirmation in their offices and the grant of titles; and for these they
were willing to pay in hard cash. They still struck coin in the em-
peror's name; in his name were still read the prayers in the mosques;
and the seals which they used to authenticate their public documents
still declared them the humble servants of the emperor. But, in strong
contrast to the observance of these forms, none thought of obeying
his orders, of remitting to him the surplus revenues of the provinces,
of mustering troops for his support. Shah 'Alam himself with his
immediate courtiers doubtless regarded them all as rebels whom he
would duly chastise had he the power; but in view of his complete
impotence he could only acquiesce. To the common people these
affairs were too remote to concern them in any way. They had
suffered in silence the establishment of Muslim rule; they had
watched with unconcern one Muslim dynasty replace another; and
how they watched unmoved the last of these falling into decay and
dishonour, while they paid their taxes to whatever power appeared
with armed force to demand them, whether it were Muslim, Marathn,
or European.
Among the princes of India two policies emerged as alternatives
to that policy of drift to which most of them were inclined. One was
to declare their independence of the empire, as Tipu did when he
## p. 603 (#631) ############################################
CORNWALLIS
603
2
proclaimed himself padshah in his own right;" the other was to espouse
the imperial cause and extend a personal dominion under the shadow
of the imperial name, as Mahadaji Rao Sindhia sought to do. Of
these the first was generally reprobated by Muslims, to whom even
the later Moghul emperors, as in an earlier century even the later
Abbasid Khalifs, symbolised religious as well as political sentiments,
though no longer capable of transforming them into effective action;
while the second of the two could only commend itself to able and
ambitious individuals, like Sindhia, who perhaps dreamed of ulti-
mately transforming the empire from Muslim to Hindu.
When matters were in this state of flux, Cornwallis arrived in India
and a new period begins in the development of the East India
Company's position. Cornwallis and the later governors-general
could not be expected to and in fact did not display that sympathy
ith Indian ideas which made the Company's servants not unwilling
to perpetuate traditional forms even though they might obscure the
essential facts of the situation. To Cornwallis the customary diplo-
matic language was a "pompous, unmeaning jargon”. The tone of
the Calcutta government rises.
"I expect”, writes Cornwallis, “that all the princes of the country except
those of the royal family shall habituate themselves to consider the English
residents at their respective courts as the representatives of a government at
least equal in power and dignity to their own. " 3
When Shah 'Alam fell into the hands of the cruel Rohilla Ghulam
Kadir Khan, Cornwallis, though horrified at the torture inflicted on
him, could see no political reason for interference. "If we should
now free him," he said, "unless we could give him an army or a
permanent fund for the payment of it, he would immediately again
become the slave and perhaps the prisoner of some other tyrant. ” 4
Casual interference would thus be useless; and practical statesmen
could not be expected to employ their resources in restoring a
vanished empire.
"I have received several melancholy [letters] from the King”, Cornwallis
writes to Shore, "calling on me in the most pressing terms for assistance and
support. This morning I wrote him a letter, perfectly civil and respectful, but
without all that jargon of allegiance and obedience, in which I stated most
explicitly the impossibility of our interference. ” 5
This was not Cornwallis's only assertion of the Company's inde-
pendence. In 1790 the Bombay Government proposed that advantage
should be taken of the death of the nawab of Surat to obtain a farman
from Shah 'Alam for the country in the Company's name. Cornwallis
rejected the proposal. For one thing the nawab had left a son whose
claims should not be overlooked; and for another, "I am. . . unwilling
1 Wilks, Historical Sketches, ed. 1867, 8, 110.
2 Cornwallis Correspondence, I, 418.
4 Idem, p. 352.
3 Idem, p. 558.
5 Idem, p. 295.
## p. 604 (#632) ############################################
604
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
to lay much stress on a sannud from the King, as a formal acknow-
ledgment of its validity might be turned to the disadvantage of the
Company upon some other occasion". Accordingly the nawab's
son was recognised as his successor by the Company, and there the
matter was left. The same procedure was adopted in 1793 when
Nasir-ul-mulk was recognised as nawab of Bengal. Sindhia in the
name of Shah 'Alam protested; but his protests were disregarded.
Similarly too when Sindhia indirectly sought to revive the demand
for Bengal tribute in 1792. Sindhia was at once informed that any
such claim would be warmly resented, on which he hastened to assure
Cornwallis that he regarded the British as supreme within their own
territories.
The government of Shore displays no change in the Company's
position; and, indeed, if circumstances had demanded of him any
important decision, he would hardly have borne the Company's
banner so high. He was much more careless of the political deductions
that might be drawn from a compliance with forms, and actually
submitted to be invested with a khilat or dress of honour by the
princes whom he visited at Benares in 1797. 2 But when in the
following year he was succeeded by Mornington as governor-general,
a change of tone rapidly became apparent. In the course of the war
with Sindhia, Lake defeated the enemy before Delhi in 1803, and
the capital and the person of the emperor fell into English hands.
This was an object which, on account of French intrigues, Morning-
ton, now become Lord Wellesley, had much at heart. A French
paper, written by one of Decaen's officers, had fallen into his hands,
stating that Shah 'Alam
ought to be the undisputed sovereign of the Moghul empire. . . . The English
Company by its ignominious treatment of the Great Moghul, has forfeited its
rights as dewan and treasurer of the empire. . . ; thus the Emperor of Delhi has
a real and indisputable right to transmit to whomsoever he may please to
select, the sovereignty of his dominions, as well as the arrears due to him from
the English.
Wellesley concluded that the English interests demanded the removal
of Shah Alam from the reach of such dangerous suggestions. The
emperor might confer on the French an independent sovereignty in
the French possessions and factories, and that, in a time of peace in
Europe, might produce most embarrassing consequences. Accordingly
when Sindhia's troops fled from Delhi, the person of the emperor
was reckoned among the most precious spoils of victory. In Maratha
hands the imperial name and prestige had not counted for much, as
was demonstrated clearly enough by the events of this same war, for,
though Sindhia was as deputy wakil-i-mutlak master of all the
resources of the empire, and on the outbreak of war had caused the
emperor to declare that he had erected his conquering standards and
1 Cornwallis Correspondence, II, 22. ? Teignmouth, Life of Shore, 1, 404,
3 Wellesley Despatches, IV, 652 sqq.
position is shown with special clearness by the fact that the Company
could not, till the treaty of 1757, obtain the right of minting coin at
Calcutta, and by the jurisdiction of the law courts there. The Com-
pany's criminal court, established by the royal charters of 1727 and
1753, was limited to Europeans. Indians were tried in the zamindar's
court. In theory all sentences of death should have been submitted
to the faujdar of Hugli and the Nazim at Murshidabad before being
put into execution. " In practice this does not seem to have been
done; but the Calcutta Council was clearly very cautious of putting
Muhammadans to death. We must discount Bolts's story, that they
were flogged to death instead of being hanged, out of deference to
Muslim opinion; but one case at least is on record, where the
Muhammadan members of a party of criminals were spared for fear
of the nawab's interference.
This position at Madras and Calcutta was profoundly changed by
the course of events which may be dated from the War of the Austrian
Succession. Madras was the first to be affected. During the war it
.
passed into the hands of the French by right of conquest, in defiance
1 Love, op. cit. I, 345. “Chinapatam" is Madras.
? Committee of Secrecy, 1773, Sixth Report, pp. 2 and 11.
3 Bolts, Considerations, 1, 80.
4 Long, Selections, p. 51. .
## p. 591 (#619) ############################################
THE CARNATIC
591
of the prohibitions of the nawab; it remained in French hands during
the war, although Dupleix agreed to make a formal recognition of
the nawab's position by flying his flag over the place for a week. '
At the end of the war it was restored to the English by the Treaty
of Aix-la-Chapelle. From that time the English might have claimed
to hold it independently of any Indian prince. However, they were
on the best of terms with Muhammad 'Ali, whom they were seeking
to establish as against the French nominee; and so, in 1752, as a mark
of gratitude the quit-rent was abolished, and with it went the last
fragment of dependence upon an Indian prince at Madras. ?
That, however, only applied to Madras itself and a very narrow
strip of land round its walls. The rest of the country lay within the
undisputed control of the nawab under the nominal sovereignty of
Delhi. When, in 1780, the nawab applied to Hastings to secure a
settlement of outstanding questions, he was specially eager to secure
declarations from the English that he was hereditary prince of the
Carnatic, with full power over the administration of his country and
the right to nominate his successor, under the general protection of
the Company and the English nation. It is apparent that all thoughts
of the Moghul emperor have disappeared, although doubtless his
name was still recited in the Friday prayers at Arcot, and for that
matter at Madras. In fact the very application shows that the Com-
pany, and not the emperor, was now suzerain. In 1792 the old nawab
died and was succeeded by the son whom for so many years he had
striven to disinherit; but the succession took place with the approval
of the Company. Finally, ten years later, for reasons which have been
explained in a previous chapter, on the next demise of the nawabship,
the Company intervened decisively. Its representative refused to
recognise any succession except on terms which at a stroke reduced
the nawab to the same position to which the nawab of Bengal had only
fallen after a term of years. He became a pensioner. On this occasion
we hear no mention of Delhi or the emperor. Sovereign powers over
the Carnatic passed to the Company, not indeed by conquest, but
in virtue of a long-established political situation, in which the
Company was in fact, though not in name, the overlord. For three
generations the old title and dignity were allowed to survive; but in
1855, in the time of Dalhousie, they were deliberately extinguished,
as a "semblance of royalty without any of the power is a mockery
of authority which must be pernicious”. 5
The case of Bengal was much more complicated, partly because
of the inferior status from which the Company set out, partly because
4
1 P. 122 supra.
2 Madras Public Consultations, 31 August, 1752.
3 Requests of the Nawab Walajah of the governor-general, Madras Military
Consultations, 22 August, 1781, p. 2280.
4 P. 361 supra.
5 Lee-Warner, Dalhousie, II, 140.
## p. 592 (#620) ############################################
592
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
1
1
it offered the first example of something like territorial acquisitions
on a large scale, and partly because of the conflicts and hesitations
of the crown and Company in England. The status of zamindar
persisted at Calcutta until the year 1756. But when at the close of
that year. Clive recovered the place, we may suppose that the logic
of events had already begun to modify the position. It was recovered
by force; and we may infer that when the English returned, they
returned no longer as humble dependents of the nawab. The change
is clearly indicated in the treaty which Clive made with Siraj-ud-
daula on 9 February following. In future the place might be fortified
as the English thought proper; the privilege of a mint was granted;
and the English nation and Company agreed to live on good terms
with the nawab so long as he observed the treaty. The theory of
Moghul sovereignty still stood, but a large breach had been made in
it. The breach was further enlarged when the English proceeded to
overthrow the ruling nawab and set up another. In the treaty with
Mir Ja'far, although the sovereignty over the country, in whosesoever
hands it lay, was not formally impaired, the English were nevertheless
established as an imperium in imperio with the right of doing them-
selves justice. The revolution of 1760 was designed to strengthen
the nawab and led, as we have seen, to a conflict between the person
invested with the sole rights of administration in the province, and
the corporation controlling the only efficient military force therein.
Again the nawab was overthrown and Mir Ja'far restored, not as had
formerly been the case, with the aid and concurrence of his friends
and supporters, but by the mere act of the Calcutta Council. In 1763
this de facto power assumed the right of nominating the nawab's
principal minister, and in the same year, under Clive's Treaty of
Allahabad, it was invested with the right of revenue administration.
The formal sovereignty still lay where it had; but alongside of the
emperor and nawab there had sprung up a body which not only
possessed the sole military force in Bengal, but also had conquered
the province in 1763, had assumed the power of nominating the
nawab's chief officer, and was now invested with the right of collect-
ing the revenues. It was an indefinite situation which could not
readily be brought within the scope of any western formulae.
The situation, perplexing as it was, was prolonged by the hesita-
tion of the English authorities to assume formal sovereignty over the
territories which in fact they controlled. Neither the crown nor the
Company was prepared, though for very different reasons, to lay
claim to territorial sovereignty in India. The Company feared that
any such claims would provoke or hasten interference
by the ministry;"
the crown was unwilling to assail the legal rights of the Company. 4
i Hill, Bengal in 1756-7, II, 215 sqq.
2 P. 171 supra.
3 Verelst, op. cit. p. 81.
4 E. g. Chatham to Shelburne, 24 May, 1773 (Chatham Correspondence, iv,
264).
## p. 593 (#621) ############################################
CROWN AND COMPANY
693
Indeed, the establishment of such a position was the precise motive
with which Clive seems in 1765 to have desired the diwanni of Bengal
rather than any territorial cession, which could have been obtained
just as readily. It placed the Company in a strong tactical position
alike as regards foreign powers and as regards the government at
home.
This had not always been Clive's aim. After Plassey he had sought
to induce Pitt to take over the government of the Company's pos-
sessions in despair of ever seeing that body establish good govern-
ment. But Pitt had then been reluctant to intervene in so complicated
a position. How complicated it was may be seen from an opinion
delivered by the law-officers on 24 December, 1757, on the Company's
memorial praying for the grant of all booty and conquests made in
India.
"In respect to such places”, they say, "as have been or shall be acquired by
treaty or grant from the Mogul or any of the Indian princes or governments,
your Majesty's letters patent are not necessary, the property of the soil vesting
in the Company by the Indian grants, subject only to your Majesty's rights of
sovereignty over the settlements as English settlements, and over the inhabi-
tants, as English subjects who carry with them your Majesty's laws wherever
they form colonies. . . . In respect to such places as have lately been acquired
or shall hereafter be acquired by conquest, the property as well as the dominion
vests in your Majesty by virtue of your known prerogative, and consequently
the Company can only derive a right to them by your Majesty's grant. . . . ”2
But although the Company could not acquire territory by conquest,
it could nevertheless "cede conquests made upon Indians", since by
its charters it had power to make war and peace with them. In 1765
the legal view undoubtedly was that British sovereignty was estab-
lished in Calcutta, in the 24-Parganas, and in the districts of Burdwan,
Midnapur and Chittagong ceded by Mir Kasim, but not in the
diwanni districts, a result which accorded well with the Company's
policy of that time. The question as to where and at what point
Indian inhabitants of places subject to English sovereignty became
English subjects does not seem to have been considered, as is clear
enough from the uncertain and ambiguous language of the Regulat-
ing Act. It was declared at Calcutta in 1773 that Sepoy officers were
“not. . . subjects of Britain, but aliens and natives of Hindustan”. 3
From the point of view of the ministry the question was clearly
two-fold : internal as regarded the Company, external as regarded
the French and other foreign nations. It will be most convenient
to sketch the development of policy under these two heads, and
finally to describe the relations between the Company's government
in India and the Moghul emperor—the de facto and the de jure
wielders of Indian dominion.
1 Malcolm, Life of Clive, , 119 sqq. ; Williams, Life of Chatham, 1, 28-9.
? Public Record Office, C. O. 77-19; cf. an undated and unsigned minute, ap.
Chatham MSS, I, 99.
8 Forrest, Selections from the State Papers of the Foreign Department, I, 89.
38
## p. 594 (#622) ############################################
594
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
The first direct exercise of sovereign power in India by the crown
since the cession of Bombay to the Company resulted from an inter-
national document, the Treaty of Paris of 1763, in which both the
French and the English governments recognised Muhammad 'Ali as
nawab of the Carnatic and Salabat Jang as subahdar of the Deccan.
No one seems to have considered how far these stipulations were
consistent with the structure of the Moghul Empire. Indeed they
were at the time intended only to secure the peace between the two
European nations in India by preventing them from continuing to
support rival, princes in those regions. At a later time, however, the
clauses were put to a new use. The disputes between the crown and
the Company which came to a head in 1766-7 made the ministry
anxious to find some means by which it could learn how matters were
actually going in India. There was reason to distrust the execution
which the Company's servants had given to the treaty in the East;
and the upshot of the matter was that when the Company sent out
its supervisors to reform its Indian administration, the ministry sent
out in command of the squadron an officer vested with plenipotentiary
powers from the king to the princes of India. About the commission
of this officer there was much underhand work that ill became the
dignity of the ministry; the commission, for instance, was not com-
municated to the Company; and so when the commodore arrived in
India he found that the Company's governments knew nothing about
the powers that had been granted to him. The natural result was the
outbreak of violent disputes between the representative of the king's
majesty and the councils which exercised the powers of the Company.
These divided and undefined powers were bound to weaken and
impede, rather than to strengthen the conduct of affairs, and the
time had not yet come when the ministry was prepared to take a
decisive part in determining Indian policy. However, it is curious to
note that among the other duties of the plenipotentiary was included
a mission to the Moghul emperor, who had sent presents to George III
by the hands of Clive, and these, by some oversight, had never been
acknowledged. Commodore Lindsay was entrusted with a letter of
thanks from the king, whose titles were for the occasion strangely
inodified, obviously with a view to impressing the court of Delhi with
a due sense of the king's importance. "George III”, the letter is
headed, "King. . . Defender of the Christian faith. . . and Sovereign
of the Seas, etc. " 1 A generation later the same style was employed
in a letter addressed to the emperor of China.
The next step after this ill-concerted effort to interfere in the
Company's Indian administration was the Regulating Act of 1773.
That act takes for granted the existence of British sovereignty in
Calcutta and its immediate neighbourhood, but not apparently
"1
1 Weymouth to Lindsay, 14 September, 1769, and George III to the Moghul,
of the same date (Brit, Mus. Add. MSS, 18020; ff. 46 verso and 50 verso). .
## p. 595 (#623) ############################################
ACTS AND TREATIES
695
beyond. At best its language is hesitating and uncertain. A dis-
tinction appears between British subjects and the native-born in-
habitants. The India Act of 1784 leaves the question still untouched,
although it legislates for the full exercise of all sovereign powers in
territory that in 1773 was clearly not yet a part of the dominions of
the crown. The act of 1793 merely declared that all territorial
acquisitions and their revenues were to remain in the possession of
the East India Company for the next twenty years, thus leaving the
question of sovereignty still open. Not until 1813 do we find the claim
to sovereignty formally asserted. In the act renewing the Company's
privileges in that year the territorial acquisitions were continued
under its control "without prejudice to the undoubted sovereignty
of the crown of the United Kingdom, etc. in and over the same”.
But at what moment that sovereignty came into being still remained
a riddle.
Much the same attitude is displayed by the treaties concluded in
this period. At first the question of sovereignty is not raised except
in regard to the factories possessed by the European nations, and
which it was taken for granted formed part of their respective terri-
tories. Thus Article 11 of the Treaty of Paris declares,
Dans les Indes Orientales la Grande Bretagne restituera à la France. . . les
différents comptoirs que cette couronne possédait. . . Et sa majesté Très Chré-
tienne renonce à toute pretention aux acquisitions qu'elle avait faite sur la
côte de Coromandel et d'Orixa depuis le dit commencement de l'année 1749. . . .
Elle s'engage de plus à ne point ériger des fortifications et à ne point entretenir
des troupes dans aucune partie des états du soubah de Bengale. . . .
It is clearly implied that the English enjoyed a special position in
Bengal by the limitations which the French engaged to observe; but
neither then nor till long after was the least attempt made to define
the position by the use of any of the political terms employed in
Europe. The article in the Treaty of Versailles of 1783 even more
obviously evades the matter. After providing for the restoration of
the French factories in Bengal, it continues :
Et sa Majesté Britannique s'engage à prendre les mesures qui seront en
son pouvoir pour assurer aux sujets de la France dans cette partie de l'Inde,
comme sur la côte de Coromandel, et de Malabar, un commerce sûr, libre et
indépendant. . . .
In 1786-7, when troubles with the French in Bengal produced
renewed discussions in Europe, leading to the convention of 1787,
the most inconsistent language was used, showing that the English
still had not been able to make up their minds as to their position
in India. Thus the Committee of Secrecy writes to the Governor-
General in Council, 19 July, 1786, stating that the French could
hardly expect the benevolent intervention of the Company so long
as they assumed a position of independence and did not "acquiesce
in the general controuling power existing in the English Companv
## p. 596 (#624) ############################################
596
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
as Dewan of the provinces". 1 But in Paris, on 6 February, 1787, Eden,
who was negotiating the convention, took up a very different position
in an explication confidentielle which he delivered to Montmorin.
His proposals, he said, were intended,
sans rien faire qui soit censé déroger à la souverainté possessoire et exclusive
dont l'Angleterre jouit dans l'Inde, de donner à la France toutes les facilités
praticables, dans la vue de former un traité de commerce. . . . C'est un fait
incontestable que l'Anglettere possède tous les droits substantiels de la souve-
rainté dans les provinces de Bengale, Bahar, et Orixa. . . . C'est en supposant
cette qualité effective de la souverainté que les deux cours ont formés l'article
11 de traité de Paris et l'article 13 de celui de Versailles. . . . ?
The French, however, did not accept this doctrine, which can hardly
be read into the treaties mentioned without vigorous interpolation.
The position is clearly summed up in an unpublished letter of Corn-
wallis to the Committee of Secrecy, dated 16 November, 1786. "From
this complicated system”, he says, "founded on grants conferred and
powers assumed, of sovereignty exercised though not avowed, many
difficulties arise in all negotiations with foreign nations. ” 3
The Treaty of Amiens only dealt with India under a general
article, but the Treaty of Paris of 1814, and the convention with the
Netherlands of the same year, both place the position of the English
Government in India beyond question internationally. Both refer
specifically to the British sovereignty in India, which was then for
the first time acknowledged by the French and the Dutch. In this
connection, and as displaying the contrast which this treaty displays
with previous diplomatic language, a sentence from Article 12 of the
Treaty of Paris may be quoted :
Sa Majesté Britannique s'engage à faire jouir les sujets de sa Majesté Très
Chrétienne relativement au commerce et à la sûreté de leurs personnes et pro-
priétés dans les limites de la souverainté britannique sur le continent des
Indes, des mêmes facilités, privilèges et protection, qui sont à présent ou seront
accordés aux nations les plus favorisées.
Thus the claim put forward by the legislation of 1813 was in the
following year formally announced to the diplomatic world of Europe
and recognised by the two powers principally interested in the East.
We must now turn to see how in India itself the position of the
East India Company gradually developed. The obvious point of
departure is the Treaty of Allahabad, by which Clive secured for the
Company a grant of the diwanni, agreeing in return to pay to the
emperor twenty-six lakhs of rupees a year besides giving him posses-
sion of Allahabad and the revenues of the neighbouring country.
The emperor at the time when he made the grant was a fugitive from
his capital, without money, without troops, dependent on the English
for his daily bread. His grant gave them nothing which they could
1 India. Office, French in India, vol XII.
Idem.
8. Idem.
## p. 597 (#625) ############################################
THE BENGAL TRIBUTE
597
1
> 3
not very well have taken for themselves had they been so minded,
and Clive's reason for his generosity, as has been pointed out above,
referred not to the position of affairs in India but to the Company's
relations with the crown and the French.
The grant was, Hastings
said, “a presumptuous gift of what was not his to give", and
The sword which gave us the dominion of Bengal must be the instrument of
its preservation; and if. . . it shall ever cease to be ours, the next proprietor
will derive his right and possession from the same natural charter. 2
Holding these views Hastings was inevitably opposed to Clive's
settlement so far as it concerned the action of the governments in
India. Indeed, he had hardly taken over the government in Bengal
in 1772 before an opportunity arose for him to give effect to his ideas.
The emperor, Shah Alam, having quitted English protection at
Allahabad for Maratha protection at Delhi, Hastings decided to stop
payment of the Bengal tribute. “I think I may promise", he wrote,
“that no more payments will be made while he is in the hands of
the Mahrattas, nor, if I can prevent it, ever more. " 3 The refusal was
diplomatically placed to the account of the Bengal famine of 1769-70.
There followed an unceasing stream of letters from Delhi, in which
the emperor or one of his ministers called upon the English to
withdraw from their position, or at the least to lend the emperor
troops who might be paid out of the arrears. Hastings at last wrote,
“I must plainly declare that until the safety and welfare of these
provinces will admit of it, I cannot consent that a single rupee be
sent out of them which it is in my power to retain”. 4 The payment of
tribute was the one really crucial element in the relations between the
emperor and the rulers of the provinces. A governor might strike
coin and have Friday prayers read in the emperor's name; he
might pay handsomely to obtain the imperial confirmation of his
succession, and offer large sums for the continuance of his predecessor's
titles; but these things meant little except when they were accom-
panied by the regular remittance of the annual tribute, which alone
signified a real, living allegiance to the imperial power. Hastings's
refusal of tribute was in effect a declaration of the practical inde-
pendence of Bengal.
It was accompanied by another act which in its way was equally
significant. The districts of Kora and Allahabad were ceded to the
nawab of Oudh. Clive's arrangement by which they had been given
to the emperor might conceivably have been represented as obedience
to the monarch's commands. Not so the decision which dispossessed
the imperial revenue-officers and transferred the districts back to the
nawab of Oudh in return for fifty lakhs paid into the Company's
1 Minute, ap. Bengal Select Committee, 4 October, 1773.
2 Minute, loc. cit. 12 October, 1772.
3 Hastings to Purling, 22 March, 1772 (Monckton Jones, op. cit. p. 147).
+ Ilastings to Shah 'Alam, 13 September, 1773 (Forrest, op. cit. 1, 58).
## p. 598 (#626) ############################################
598
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
treasury. As if in order to make the position clearer still, Hastings
declined the title which the emperor offered him. In another way,
too, Hastings aimed at introducing English sovereignty, though
circumstances did not allow him to carry it into execution.
He
advocated the replacement of alliances between Indian princes and
the Company by alliances between them and the crown. The first
occasion on which he placed these ideas on paper seems to have been
in a letter to North of 26 February, 1775; 2 but from a later letter to
Elliot of 12 January, 1777, it appears that the subject must have been
discussed between him and Shuja-ud-daula when he visited Benares
in 1773. He states that the nawab was desirous of alliance with
George III and even offered to coin money in the name of the English
monarch. Hastings was still in favour of this project in 1777, and
thought it might be applied not only to Oudh but also to Berar.
Had this policy been carried into effect, it would have led to a formal
assertion of English paramountcy in India. But the directors, had it
even been proposed to them, would have objected to it as lessening
their importance, while the ministry of the time had no clear-cut
conception of its own purposes. The plan thus came to nothing, and
survives only as a project, foiled, like so many of Hastings's plans, ov
the opposition or the inertia of others.
While Hastings was thus bent on repudiating the emperor's
authority over Bengal, he was equally active in reducing even the
ostensible part played by that phantom the nawab in its internal
management-implanting, as he said, the authority of the Company
and the sovereignty of Great Britain in the constitution.
“The truth is”, he wrote to the Secret Committee on 1 September, 1772,
"that the affairs of the Company stand at present on a footing which can neither
last as it is nor be maintained on the rigid principles of private justice. You
must establish your own power, or you must hold it dependent on a superior,
which I deem to be impossible. " 4
In these ideas he was encouraged by the Company's decision
"to stand forth as diwan”. One of the guiding principles which
inspired the reforms of the period 1772-4 was to make Calcutta
the visible capital of the province. Thither was moved the chief
revenue-office, and thither went the appeals from the courts which
he established. "In a word", he claimed in 1773, "the sovereign
authority of the Company is firmly rooted in every branch of the
state. " 5
But in this he had out-run the intentions of his masters, the
directors, and their masters, the parliament and crown. Lawyers like
Thurlow might with brutal directness declare that in India existed no
1 Hastings to Shah 'Alam, 1 August, 1773 (Calendar of Persian Correspond-
ence, IV, 77).
2 Gleig, op. cit. I, 508.
3 Idem, u, 136.
4 Idem, I, 254.
5 Idem, p. 332.
## p. 599 (#627) ############################################
HASTINGS AND THE COUNCIL
599
powers or rights but force, and that it was "a country with no public
moral or faith". 1 But no one in England was yet ready to accept the
idea of filling with British sovereignty the void created by the disso-
lution of the Moghul Power. The vagueness of the Regulating Act
corresponded in its own way with the vagueness of the directors'
orders. They might resolve directly to administer the Bengal revenues
on reports that their Indian deputy was playing them false; but
though they enjoyed the powers they were not prepared to assume
the position of the masters of Bengal. When they received complaints,
for instance, that the French were refusing to obey the orders issued
in the nawab's name, they replied :
We direct that you afford the Country Government all necessary assistance
in the execution of such equitable laws as are or may be framed for the pro-
tection of the natives. . . . If the French persist in their contempt of the Nabob,
it is our order that you decline as much as possible entering into a discussion
of such of their complaints as shall be cognizable by the Nazim of the province,
for so long as the English pay attention to His Excellency, it cannot be expected
that other Europeans should be allowed to disregard him. . . .
So when Clavering and his followers arrived in India, and found that
Hastings had adopted a different policy, and above all when they
found the Supreme Court taking the same line, calling the nawab
"a man of straw", and demanding that the majority should make
oath that he was a sovereign independent prince, conducting his
own affairs independently of their government and capable of making
war and peace with Calcutta, though they were unable to make the
required affidavits they were strongly inclined to adopt, support, and
enforce the Company's views, reviving the phantom which Clive had
summoned up. Not impossibly the latter had urged this course on
Francis in some of those meetings which took place at Walcot shortly
before the majority sailed from England and which were full of evil
cmen for the relations between the governor-general and his new
colleagues. Hence their endeavour to maintain the fiction of the dual
government and to hide the authority of the East India Company.
Accordingly they insisted on re-establishing Muhammad Riza Khan
as deputy nazim and supported their decision by taunting Hastings
with neglect of the Company's intentions.
"The Governor roundly insists”, we read, "on the futility of attempting to
maintain a country government. . . . An old servant of the Company might at
least have treated their deliberate and invariable opinion with greater respect.
With regard to us, if our ideas on this subject had not entirely concurred with
theirs, and if we had not been convinced that in their circumstances it was the
only rational system they could pursue, we should still have thought it our
duty. . . to have adopted their doctrines. "
1 Thurlow's Opinion on Clive's Jagir Case.
2 Company to Bengal, 3 March, 1775, paras. 59 sqq.
: Bengal Secret Consultations, 29 February, 1776.
## p. 600 (#628) ############################################
600
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
Besides these thin and hollow declarations should be placed Hastings's
vigorous and (in this case) accurate language.
All the arts of policy cannot conceal the power by which these provinces
are ruled, nor can all the arts of sophistry avail to transfer the responsibility
of ihem to the Nabob, when it is as visible as the light of the sun that they
originate from our own government, that the Nabob is a mere pageant without
so much as the shadow of authority, and even his most consequential agents
receive their appointment from the recommendation of the Company and the
express nomination of their servants. 1
Absolute as the opposition appears, it is nevertheless deceptive.
The majority were ready to use any stick to beat Hastings with, even
if it was not one of their own growing; and although under the stress
of controversy they found themselves committed to the views set
down above, they had not always considered the dual system of
government that best adapted to the situation of Bengal. In a letter
written early in 1775 Francis had pointed out that under the system
which in the next year the majority advocated so heartily, the people
of Bengal had either two sovereigns or none, and that the only course
to follow was to declare the sovereignty of the king of Great Britain
over the whole of the provinces; and at this time his criticisms of
Hastings's conduct seem confined to the fact that in abolishing the
Moghul sovereignty he had not formally declared the British. ?
Francis had recorded similar sentiments in a minute of 8 March, 1775.
After this it is odd to find him, in a private, unpublished letter to
Lord North, declaring that the English should set about giving or
restoring an active constitution to the Moghul Empire. “The autho-
rity of the Emperor should be in a considerable degree restored and
means given him to support it. ” 3 The revival of the empire would
have been wholly inconsistent with English authority in Bengal.
It is worth noting that in this respect the policies of the English
and the French had been, and continued to be, diametrically opposed.
Dupleix and Bussy had consistently acted within the theory of the
empire. They had based their claims in Southern India on the
authority of Salabat Jang, as legitimate subahdar of the Deccan.
Even in the Seven Years' War, when matters were going ill for the
French, Bussy advocated summoning the subahdar's brother, Basalat
Jang, into the Carnatic, on the ground that the authority of his name
and connection with the subahdar would enable the French to collect
revenues where without him they could not raise a rupee. All
their intrigues of a later date included schemes to secure the influence
of the imperial name, as if that could give them a man more in
the field or a rupee more in the treasury. Down to the time of
Wellesley they continued to dream of reviving the empire in order
1 Hastings's Minute, ap. Bengal Secret Consultations, 7 December, 1775.
2 Francis to. North, February, 1775 (Parkes and Merivale, I, 27).
3 Same to same, 21 November, 1775 (Public Record Office, T 49-8).
## p. 601 (#629) ############################################
BROWNE'S MISSION
601
2
3
thereby to establish their own supremacy; and so obsessed were they
with this idea that some of them even attributed it to their English
rivals. 1
But Jean Law, the coolest head among them, saw better and more
clearly into the heart of things. In a mémoire composed in 1777 he
pointed out with incisive force that English security depended on the
existence of many independent princes, certain to be divided among
themselves, and so incapable of a unit-d attack on the foreigner;
but, if the government of Calcutta set to work to increase its power
under cover of re-establishing the Moghul Empire, it would be
following the only policy which would give every prince of India an
urgent motive for attacking it. ? The ideas with which Francis dallied
had occurred to many Englishmen before him—to Clive, who had
resolutely put them aside; to Vansittart; who had been willing to put
them into action but luckily had been prevented by circumstances.
Here the Company was in complete agreement with its servants'
actual policy. An attempt to restore the emperor at Delhi, the Com-
pany had written, "might bring on the total ruin of our affairs; and
we add that, should you be persuaded into so rash and dangerous
a measure, we shall deem you responsible for all the consequences”. ?
Hastings, however, was never adverse to modifying his policy, if
it seemed desirable, with all that freedom from the shackles of a
formal consistency which is the peculiar privilege of the despot. Not
that he ever weakened on the point of English sovereignty in Bengal,
but in 1782 he thought it desirable to re-enter into relations with
Delhi, and with that object had appointed Major James Browne to
be his agent at that place. Browne was first to visit the nawab of
Oudh and ascertain his views, since Hastings desired "to second and
assist his views [rather] than to be the principal or leader in any plan
that may be undertaken”. Aware that the emperor might take
advantage of the agent's appearance to raise once more the old
question of the tribute and Allahabad, Hastings instructed him to
avoid if possible the discussion of such unpleasant topics, "since it is
not in my power to grant either one or the other". The purpose of the
mission was rather to secure information than anything else. “Hitherto
we have known nothing of the political state of the court but from
foreign and suspected channels. Your first care must be to collect
the materials for a more complete and authentic knowledge,
only of Shah 'Alam's court but also of “the independent chiefs and
states whose territories border on his”. 4 This was then no revival of
the schemes of Vansittart, merely an extension of political relations to
1 Cf. Modave's Memorandum of 1774, ap. Barbé, Madec, p. 65.
2 Law, État politique de l'Inde en 1777, pp. 76-7.
8 Company to Bengal, 16 March, 1768.
4 Hastings to Browne, 20 August, 1782, ap. Bengal Secret Consultations, 10
September, 1783. A collection of papers bearing on the British relations with
Delhi forms Home Miscellaneous volume no. 336 at the India Office.
## p. 602 (#630) ############################################
602
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
a prince of exalted dignity and pretensions but of definitely circum-
scribed territorial power, and whose sovereignty, as Hastings observed
on a later occasion, “is universally acknowledged though the sub-
stance of it no longer exists".
Browne's mission led to no action of any kind; but on the occasion
of Hastings's final visit to Benares in 1784, he was brought into contact
with a fugitive prince, Mirza Jiwan Bakht, who had fled from Delhi
and was anxious for English or any other intervention to procure his
return. At this time Hastings was regarding with a speculative eyc
the rise of the Sikh power in Northern India, whence he predicted
the emergence of new dangers to the Company's possessions "if this
people is permitted to grow into maturity without interruption”.
He seems to have contemplated the possibility of affording assistance
to the prince with a view to checking the advances of the Sikhs; buć
preferred that Mahadaji Rao Sindhia should be committed to this
enterprise; indeed very shortly after this, on the occasion of the
murder of Afrasiab Khan, Sindhia did assume control of affairs at
Delhi; and this was the position of affairs when Hastings quitted
India early in 1785.
The degree in which the decay of the Moghul Empire was appa-
rent to and recognised by the people of India, and the aspect under
which the rising power of the East India Company appeared to them,
must have varied widely according to the class and the interests of the
observer. Princes such as the nawab of Oudh or the Nizam of
Hyderabad still made haste on their accession to obtain a formal
confirmation in their offices and the grant of titles; and for these they
were willing to pay in hard cash. They still struck coin in the em-
peror's name; in his name were still read the prayers in the mosques;
and the seals which they used to authenticate their public documents
still declared them the humble servants of the emperor. But, in strong
contrast to the observance of these forms, none thought of obeying
his orders, of remitting to him the surplus revenues of the provinces,
of mustering troops for his support. Shah 'Alam himself with his
immediate courtiers doubtless regarded them all as rebels whom he
would duly chastise had he the power; but in view of his complete
impotence he could only acquiesce. To the common people these
affairs were too remote to concern them in any way. They had
suffered in silence the establishment of Muslim rule; they had
watched with unconcern one Muslim dynasty replace another; and
how they watched unmoved the last of these falling into decay and
dishonour, while they paid their taxes to whatever power appeared
with armed force to demand them, whether it were Muslim, Marathn,
or European.
Among the princes of India two policies emerged as alternatives
to that policy of drift to which most of them were inclined. One was
to declare their independence of the empire, as Tipu did when he
## p. 603 (#631) ############################################
CORNWALLIS
603
2
proclaimed himself padshah in his own right;" the other was to espouse
the imperial cause and extend a personal dominion under the shadow
of the imperial name, as Mahadaji Rao Sindhia sought to do. Of
these the first was generally reprobated by Muslims, to whom even
the later Moghul emperors, as in an earlier century even the later
Abbasid Khalifs, symbolised religious as well as political sentiments,
though no longer capable of transforming them into effective action;
while the second of the two could only commend itself to able and
ambitious individuals, like Sindhia, who perhaps dreamed of ulti-
mately transforming the empire from Muslim to Hindu.
When matters were in this state of flux, Cornwallis arrived in India
and a new period begins in the development of the East India
Company's position. Cornwallis and the later governors-general
could not be expected to and in fact did not display that sympathy
ith Indian ideas which made the Company's servants not unwilling
to perpetuate traditional forms even though they might obscure the
essential facts of the situation. To Cornwallis the customary diplo-
matic language was a "pompous, unmeaning jargon”. The tone of
the Calcutta government rises.
"I expect”, writes Cornwallis, “that all the princes of the country except
those of the royal family shall habituate themselves to consider the English
residents at their respective courts as the representatives of a government at
least equal in power and dignity to their own. " 3
When Shah 'Alam fell into the hands of the cruel Rohilla Ghulam
Kadir Khan, Cornwallis, though horrified at the torture inflicted on
him, could see no political reason for interference. "If we should
now free him," he said, "unless we could give him an army or a
permanent fund for the payment of it, he would immediately again
become the slave and perhaps the prisoner of some other tyrant. ” 4
Casual interference would thus be useless; and practical statesmen
could not be expected to employ their resources in restoring a
vanished empire.
"I have received several melancholy [letters] from the King”, Cornwallis
writes to Shore, "calling on me in the most pressing terms for assistance and
support. This morning I wrote him a letter, perfectly civil and respectful, but
without all that jargon of allegiance and obedience, in which I stated most
explicitly the impossibility of our interference. ” 5
This was not Cornwallis's only assertion of the Company's inde-
pendence. In 1790 the Bombay Government proposed that advantage
should be taken of the death of the nawab of Surat to obtain a farman
from Shah 'Alam for the country in the Company's name. Cornwallis
rejected the proposal. For one thing the nawab had left a son whose
claims should not be overlooked; and for another, "I am. . . unwilling
1 Wilks, Historical Sketches, ed. 1867, 8, 110.
2 Cornwallis Correspondence, I, 418.
4 Idem, p. 352.
3 Idem, p. 558.
5 Idem, p. 295.
## p. 604 (#632) ############################################
604
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
to lay much stress on a sannud from the King, as a formal acknow-
ledgment of its validity might be turned to the disadvantage of the
Company upon some other occasion". Accordingly the nawab's
son was recognised as his successor by the Company, and there the
matter was left. The same procedure was adopted in 1793 when
Nasir-ul-mulk was recognised as nawab of Bengal. Sindhia in the
name of Shah 'Alam protested; but his protests were disregarded.
Similarly too when Sindhia indirectly sought to revive the demand
for Bengal tribute in 1792. Sindhia was at once informed that any
such claim would be warmly resented, on which he hastened to assure
Cornwallis that he regarded the British as supreme within their own
territories.
The government of Shore displays no change in the Company's
position; and, indeed, if circumstances had demanded of him any
important decision, he would hardly have borne the Company's
banner so high. He was much more careless of the political deductions
that might be drawn from a compliance with forms, and actually
submitted to be invested with a khilat or dress of honour by the
princes whom he visited at Benares in 1797. 2 But when in the
following year he was succeeded by Mornington as governor-general,
a change of tone rapidly became apparent. In the course of the war
with Sindhia, Lake defeated the enemy before Delhi in 1803, and
the capital and the person of the emperor fell into English hands.
This was an object which, on account of French intrigues, Morning-
ton, now become Lord Wellesley, had much at heart. A French
paper, written by one of Decaen's officers, had fallen into his hands,
stating that Shah 'Alam
ought to be the undisputed sovereign of the Moghul empire. . . . The English
Company by its ignominious treatment of the Great Moghul, has forfeited its
rights as dewan and treasurer of the empire. . . ; thus the Emperor of Delhi has
a real and indisputable right to transmit to whomsoever he may please to
select, the sovereignty of his dominions, as well as the arrears due to him from
the English.
Wellesley concluded that the English interests demanded the removal
of Shah Alam from the reach of such dangerous suggestions. The
emperor might confer on the French an independent sovereignty in
the French possessions and factories, and that, in a time of peace in
Europe, might produce most embarrassing consequences. Accordingly
when Sindhia's troops fled from Delhi, the person of the emperor
was reckoned among the most precious spoils of victory. In Maratha
hands the imperial name and prestige had not counted for much, as
was demonstrated clearly enough by the events of this same war, for,
though Sindhia was as deputy wakil-i-mutlak master of all the
resources of the empire, and on the outbreak of war had caused the
emperor to declare that he had erected his conquering standards and
1 Cornwallis Correspondence, II, 22. ? Teignmouth, Life of Shore, 1, 404,
3 Wellesley Despatches, IV, 652 sqq.
