So three supervisors, vested with full powers, were appointed, and set sail for India in one of His Majesty's frigates. But Fate intervened. They passed the Cape in safety, but were never heard of again.
This was too much. A victim must be found. Therefore Clive was arraigned. That story has already been told, so we can pass on to the mutual recriminations in Parliament, the growing determination on the part of John Bull, honest and dishonest, that something must be done, which found fruit in the first Regulating Act "for the better management of the affairs of the East India Company as well in India as in Europe." By this Act a governor-generalship with a salary of £25,000 was created, together with four councillorships of £8,000. Bombay and Madras were made subordinate to Calcutta, and a Supreme Court of Judicature, appointed by the Crown, was established at the latter place. All the other appointments were to be subject to the confirmation of Parliament, and all the holders of these offices were excluded from commercial pursuits.
The scheme sounded well, but it provided very little aid in reforming the abuses which undoubtedly existed.
It increased the charges upon revenues already overburdened, and the attempt to introduce English ideas of law was calculated to produce more injustice, more oppression, and rouse more alarm and distrust than the previous absence of it had done.
But the dividend for the year 1773 had sunk to 6 per cent.
It was manifestly time to be up and doing--something!
[WARREN HASTINGS]
A.D. 1773 TO A.D. 1784
It will be remembered that Warren Hastings was the only Member of Council who supported Clive in his decision that all servants of the Company engaging in private trade were bound to pay duty.
Thus, undoubtedly, Clive's enemies must have been his enemies. He had, however, risen with reputation through the various stages of his Indian career; in 1772 he was made President-of-the-Council in Bengal, and immediately set to work to remedy the existing abuses in the collection of the revenue and the whole general administration; a task which was not likely to bring him an addition of friends. While this great revolution in system, which involved the letting of land by public auction, was in full swing, the native potentates beyond Bengal were as usual in a seething state of intrigue. The Prince-Royal-Emperor Shâh-Âlam had at last succeeded in getting the Mahrattas to aid him in recovering Delhi, though he had had to pay a huge price for their help, amongst other things the cession to them of his grant from the English of Allahabad. Consequently, the rich country of the Rohillas (an Afghân race who had settled in India), which reached up from the Delhi plains to the Sivâlik hills, attracted him as a means of again filling his treasury. The Mahrattas were, naturally, nothing loth; so the combined forces marched on Rohilkund, despite the fact that its people were friendly. In the general catch-who-catch-can of India in these days, friendship, honour, truth, counted for nothing it is to be feared, neither with East nor West.