Hastings was succeeded as Governor-General by Lord Cornwallis, the victor of Camden and the vanquished of Yorktown. This honest and brave man was set the task of governing India under a new constitution. In 1784 Pitt had passed an "India Bill" not very unlike that of Fox. It gave the Crown the supreme power over the Company, making the Governor-General and the Board of Control in London nominees of the Crown. But the Company was still left its patronage, its monopoly of trade, and a certain undefined power over the Governor-General which led to much trouble in the future.
Cornwallis' Indian policy.
Cornwallis ruled British India for seven years (1786-1793), and, though he had gone out with no intention of engaging in wars or aggrandizing the Company's dominions, was driven by the force of circumstances into a policy which was practically identical with that of Warren Hastings.
War with Tippoo of Mysore.
The Sultan Tippoo of Mysore, always restless and quarrelsome, made war on all his neighbours, till at last, in 1789, he attacked the Rajah of Travancore, a vassal of the Company. Resolved to crush the Sultan, Cornwallis built up a great alliance with the Nizam, the Mohammedan ruler of the Hyderabad state, and with the chiefs of the Mahrattas. Standing at the head of this confederacy, the English appeared for the first time as asserting a predominance over the whole peninsula. Neither the Mahrattas nor the Nizam gave any very material aid towards the suppression of Tippoo, but Cornwallis proved able to accomplish it without their assistance. His first advance into Mysore was foiled by lack of provisions, but in the next year (1791) he forced his way into the heart of Tippoo's realm, beat him at the battle of Arikera, and then stormed the lines of Seringapatam, which covered the Sultan's capital. A few more days' fighting would have put it in the hands of Cornwallis; but when Tippoo humbled himself and asked for peace, he was spared. Nearly half his dominions were taken from him—part to be added to the Madras Presidency, part to be given to the Nizam and the Mahrattas. It was fortunate that Tippoo did not delay his attack on the allies for a few years; if he had waited a little longer, he would have found England deep in her struggle with the French Revolution. As it was, he was so crushed that he gave no trouble for eight years more.
The "Perpetual Settlement."
Hardly less important than the Mysore war was Cornwallis's well-intentioned but ill-judged measure, the "Perpetual Settlement" of Bengal. This was a scheme for permanently fixing the land revenue of that province, by assessing a fair rent to be paid to the Company—as supreme lord of the soil—which should not vary from year to year, but remain for ever at the moderate figure at which it was now settled. But unfortunately Cornwallis did not make the bargain with the ryots, or peasants, the real owners of the land, but with the zemindars, a class of hereditary tax-collectors who were one of the legacies left to us by the old Mogul rulers of India. As the Government made its contract with the zemindar for the rent of each group of villages, and undertook never to ask more from him than a certain fixed amount, it became the interest of this tax-collecting class to screw up the contributions of the villagers to the highest point, as the whole profit went into their own pockets. The rack-renting led to a general strike among the peasantry, who agreed to withhold their rents, and to go to law with the zemindars en masse, knowing that they could choke the law-courts for years by sending in thousands of appeals at the same moment. The result of this conspiracy—much like one that was seen in Ireland only a few years ago—was to ruin most of the zemindars, who became liable for the land-tax to the Government, and could not raise it while the ryots were fighting them in the courts. In any other country than Bengal this crisis must have led to agrarian civil war, but the Bengalis preferred litigation to outrages, and affairs ultimately settled down. Later legislation has wisely taken note of the rights of the ryot as well as those of the zemindar, but the pledge of the "Perpetual Settlement" has never been broken, and to this day the lands of Bengal pay no more to the crown than the moderate assessment of 1793—a standing proof that the British Government keeps its word.
Cornwallis came home in 1794, to find England plunged in the greatest war that she has ever known—that with the French Revolution.