Clive had chosen Mr. Vansittart to succeed him as President of the Council in Bengal because he believed he had recognized in him a man who would do all in his power to put down the growing system of venality and corruption. I have already shown how he had written to him before he quitted India. The words he had used were: 'The expected reinforcements will, in my opinion, put Bengal out of all danger but that of venality and corruption.' But Clive had not sufficiently considered that the very fact that the new President had been selected from Madras instead of from amongst the men who had served under his immediate orders was likely to cause jealousy among the latter; that Vansittart, notwithstanding his estimated lofty moral nature,1 had no strength of character; no such persuasive powers as could win men to his side; no pre-eminent abilities; no force of will, such as Clive himself would have displayed, to dominate or, in case of great emergency, to suspend a refractory colleague. He was but one of the herd, well-meaning, opposed in principle to the venality and corruption then in vogue, but, in every sense of the term, ordinary. Even with respect to the two vices he denounced, he was an untried and untempted man.
1 One anecdote will demonstrate the extent of the 'lofty moral nature' attributed by Clive to Mr. Vansittart. After Clive had been a year or so in England he wrote to Vansittart requesting him to select for him and despatch to him an elephant, as he wished to present one to the King. Vansittart chose and despatched the elephant for presentation to his Majesty, not as a gift from Clive, but as from himself.
His capacity for rule was put to the test very soon after he had assumed the reins of office. Those reins had not, as I have said, been handed to him by Clive. He had taken them from Mr. Holwell at the very end of July (1760). In the interval an event had occurred which had changed the general position in Bengal. Five months after Clive had quitted Calcutta (July 2, 1760) Míran, the only son of the Súbahdár, Mír Jafar, was struck dead by lightning. The reader may recollect the passage in his letter to Mr. Pitt, wherein Clive referred to this young man. He had described him as 'so cruel, worthless a young fellow, and so apparently an enemy to the English, that it will be almost unsafe trusting him with the succession.' If another successor, with an unquestionable title, had been immediately available, the death of Míran would have been no calamity. But there was no such successor. The next son in order of succession had seen but thirteen summers. Outside of that boy and his younger brothers were many claimants, not one of them with an indefeasible title. Mír Jafar himself was older even than his years. It devolved then, with the tacit consent of the nobles, on the Council at Calcutta, to nominate the successor to Míran. Such was the state of affairs when Mr. Vansittart arrived, and took his seat as President of the Council.
It happened that there were in Bengal at this time two officers who had rendered conspicuous service to the State, Majors Calliaud and Knox. During the very month in which Clive had quitted Calcutta, these officers had marched with such English troops and sipáhís as were available, to assist in the repelling of an invasion made by the titular King of Delhi, prompted, it was believed, by Míran, and had repulsed, with great loss to the enemy, an attempt made to storm the city of Patná. Vansittart, who knew Calliaud well alike as a friend and as a man trusted by Clive, summoned him to attend the Council upon the deliberations of which the future of Bengal depended. The discussions were long and somewhat heated. The party in the Council which represented most accurately the opinions of Clive, as rendered in his letter to Mr. Pitt, already referred to,2 was of opinion that whilst Mír Jafar should be allowed to reign during the remainder of his life, opportunity should be taken of his death to transfer the direct administration to the English. If this opportunity had been taken to carry out some such policy it is probable that the evils which followed would have been avoided.
2 Clive's letter had been written during the life of Míran. After detailing his character and the growing infirmities of Mír Jafar, he had added: 'so small a body as 2000 Europeans will secure us against any apprehensions from either the one or the other; and, in case of their daring to be troublesome, enable the Company to take the sovereignty upon themselves.'
The discussions were still proceeding when there arrived an envoy from the Súbahdár, his son-in-law, Mír Muhammad Kásim, a man of ability, tact, great persuasive powers, no scruple, and, in a certain sense, a patriot. Mír Kásim had coveted the succession vacant by the death of Míran. He had divined the plans of the English; he hated them as the enemies of the race of conquerors who had ruled Bengal and its people for centuries. He despised them as venal: and he had resolved to use them for his own advantage. He had brought with him a bag full of promises, and, though nominally the representative of Mír Jafar, had come resolved to work for his own interests.
Admitted into the secret deliberations of the Council, Mír Kásim soon realized that, with the single exception of Major Calliaud, he could buy them all. Even the scrupulousness of Mr. Vansittart vanished before his golden arguments. He bought them. For certain specified sums of money to be paid by him to each member of Council,3 these official Englishmen covenanted to dethrone their ally of Plassey, Mír Jafar, and to seat on the masnad his son-in-law, Mír Kásim. Three days after the signature of the treaty Mír Kásim set out to make his preparations for the coming event, and two days afterwards Mr. Vansittart started for Murshidábád to break the news to Mír Jafar. His very first official act had been a violation of the principle prescribed to him by Clive as the one the non-indulgence in which would secure the English from all danger.
3 He included even Major Calliaud, but without the consent, and after the departure from India, of that officer.
The events which followed must be stated very briefly. Vansittart obtained from Mír Jafar his resignation. The one condition stipulated by the old man was that thenceforth he should reside, under the protection of the English, at Calcutta, or in its immediate vicinity. For that city he started the following morning (September 19). Mír Kásim proceeded to Patná to complete the arrangements which had followed the repulse of the invasion of Bihár by the troops of Sháh Alím, and was there formally installed by Sháh Alím himself as Súbahdár of Bengal, Bihár, and Orissa.
Mír Kásim possessed all the capacities of a ruler. He knew thoroughly the evils under which the three provinces were groaning, and he proceeded with all the energy of a nature which never tired to reform them. He moved his capital to Mungír, a town with a fortress, on the right bank of the Ganges, commanding Northern and Eastern Bihár, and nearly midway between Calcutta and Benares. He then proceeded to reform his infantry on the English system, enlisting in his service two well-known soldiers of mixed or Armenian descent, Samru and Markar, to command brigades of their own, and to aid in the training of the other soldiers. So far he achieved success. But when he proceeded to alleviate the misery of his people, he found that the fatal gift of the salt monopoly enabled the English to thwart all his efforts. For not only did the English use the authority they possessed to the great impoverishment of the soil, but they gave to their friends and dependents licences exempting from the payment of duty in such profusion, that the people of Bengal and Bihár suffered to an extent such as, in the present day, can with difficulty be credited. Never, on the one side, was there so insatiable a determination to become rich, no matter what misery might be thereby caused to others; never, on the other, a more honest endeavour, by sacrifices of any kind, to escape the ruin caused by such cruel exactions.