A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon / For the Use of Schools and Colleges

by John Lord

This rich capital was governed by a prince nominally subject to the Great Mogul, but who was dependent on the Nabob of Oude, a large province north of the Ganges, near the Himmaleh Mountains. Benares and its territories, being oppressed by the Nabob of Oude, sought the protection of the British. Their protection was, of course, readily extended; but it was fatal to the independence of Benares. The alliance with the English was like the protection Rome extended to Greece when threatened by Asia, and which ended in the subjection of both Greece and Asia. The Rajah of Benares became the vassal of the company, and therefore was obliged to furnish money for the protection he enjoyed.

But the tribute which the Rajah of Benares paid did not satisfy Hastings. He exacted still greater sums, which led to an insurrection and ultimate conquest. The fair domains of Cheyte Sing, the lord of Benares, were added to the dominions of the company together with an increased revenue of two hundred thousand pounds a year. The treasure of the rajah amounted to two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, and this was divided as prize money among the English.

The rapacious governor-general did not obtain the treasure which he expected to find at Benares, and then resolved to Robbery of the Princesses of Oude. rob the Princesses of Oude, who had been left with immense treasures on the death of Suraj-w Dowlah, the nabob vizier of the Grand Mogul. The only pretext which Hastings could find was, that the insurrection at Benares had produced disturbances at Oude, and which disturbances were imputed to the princesses. Great barbarities were inflicted in order to secure these treasures; but the robbers were successful, and immense sums flowed into the treasury of the company. By these iniquities, the governor found means to conduct the war in the Carnatic successfully, and a treaty was concluded with Tippoo, the son of Hyder Ali, by which the company reigned without a rival on the great Indian peninsula.

When peace was restored to India, and the company's servants had accumulated immense fortunes, Hastings returned to England. But the iniquities he had practised excited great indignation among those statesmen who regarded justice and humanity as better supports to a government than violence and rapine.

Foremost among these patriots was Edmund Burke. He had long been a member of the select committee to investigate Indian affairs, and he had bestowed great attention to them, and fully understood the course which Hastings had pursued.

Through his influence, an inquiry into the conduct of the late governor-general was instituted, and he was accordingly impeached at the bar of the House of Lords. Mr. Pitt permitted matters to take their natural course; but the king, the Lord Chancellor Thurlow, the ministers generally, and the directors of the East India Company espoused his cause. They regarded him as a very great man, whose rule had been glorious to the nation, in spite of the mistakes and cruelties which marked his government. He had added an empire to the British crown, educed order out of anarchy, and organized a system of administration which, in its essential features, has remained to this time. He enriched the company, while he did not enrich himself; for he easily might have accumulated a fortune of three millions of pounds. And he moreover contrived, in spite of his extortions and conquests, to secure the respect of the native population, whose national and religious prejudices he endeavored not to shock. "These things inspired good will. At the same time, his constant success, and the manner in which he extricated himself from every difficulty, made him an object of superstitious admiration; and the more than regal splendor which he sometimes displayed, dazzled a people who have much in common with children. Even now, after the lapse of more than fifty years, the natives of India still talk of him as the greatest of the English, and nurses sing children to sleep with a gingling ballad about the fleet horses and richly-caparisoned elephants of Sahib Warren Hostein."

But neither the admiration of the people of the East for the splendid abilities of Hastings, nor the gratitude of a company of merchants, nor the powerful friends he had in the English parliament, could screen him from the malignant hatred of Francis, or the purer indignation of Burke. The zeal which the latter evinced in his Prosecution of Hastings. prosecution has never been equalled, and all his energies, for years, were devoted to the exposure of a person whom he regarded as "a delinquent of the first magnitude." "He had just as lively an idea of the insurrection at Benares as of Lord George Gordon's riots, and of the execution of Nuncomar as of the execution of Dr. Dodd." Burke was assisted in his vehement prosecution by Charles James Fox, the greatest debater ever known in the House of Commons, but a man vastly inferior to himself in moral elevation, in general knowledge, in power of fancy, and in profound wisdom.

The trial was at Westminster Hall, the hall which had witnessed the inauguration of thirty kings, and the trials of accused nobles since the time of William Rufus. And he was a culprit not unworthy of that great tribunal before which he was summoned—"a tribunal which had pronounced sentence on Strafford, and pardon on Somers"—the tribunal before which royalty itself had been called to account. Hastings had ruled, with absolute sway, a country which was more populous and more extensive than any of the kingdoms of Europe, and had gained a fame which was bounded only by the unknown countries of the globe. He was defended by three men who subsequently became the three highest judges of the land, and he was encouraged by the appearance and sympathetic smiles of the highest nobles of the realm.

But greater than all were the mighty statesmen who conducted the prosecution. First among them in character and genius was Edmund Burke. Edmund Burke, who, from the time that he first spoke in the House of Commons, in 1766, had been a prominent member, and had, at length, secured greater fame than any of his contemporaries, Pitt alone excepted, not merely as an orator, but as an enlightened statesman, a philosopher, and a philanthropist. He excelled all the great men with whom he was associated, in the variety of his powers; he was a poet even while a boy; a penetrating philosopher, critic, and historian before the age of thirty; a statesman of unrivalled moral wisdom; an orator whose speeches have been read with increasing admiration in every succeeding age; a judge of the fine arts to whose opinions Reynolds submitted; and a writer on various subjects, in which he displayed not only vast knowledge, but which he treated in a style of matchless beauty and force. All the great men of his age—Johnson, Reynolds, Goldsmith, Garrick, Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, Windham, North, Thurlow, Parr—scholars, critics, divines, and statesmen—bore testimony to his commanding genius and his singular moral worth, to his hatred of vice, and his passionate love of virtue. But these great and varied excellences, which secured him the veneration of the finest minds in Europe, were not fully appreciated by his own nation, which was astonished rather than governed by his prophetic wisdom. But Burke was remarkable, not merely for his knowledge, eloquence, and genius but also for an unblemished private life, for the habitual exercise of all those virtues, and the free expression of all those noble sentiments which only have marked exalted Christian characters. In his political principles, he was a conservative, and preferred to base his views on history and experience, rather than to try experiments, especially when these were advocated by men whose moral character or infidel sentiments excited his distrust or aversion. He did not shut his eyes to abuse, but aimed to mend deliberately and cautiously. His admonition to his country respecting America corresponded with his general sentiments. "Talk not of your abstract rights of government; I hate the very sound of them; follow experience and common sense." He believed that love was better than force, and that the strength of any government consisted in the affections of the people. And these he ever strove to retain, and for these he was willing to relinquish momentary gain and selfish aggrandizement. He advocated concession to the Irish legislature; justice and security to the people of India; liberty of conscience to Dissenters; relief to small debtors; the suppression of general warrants; the extension of the power of juries; freedom of the press; retrenchment in the public expenditures; the removal of commercial restrictions; and the abolition of the slave trade. He had a great contempt for "mechanical politicians," and "pedler principles." And he lived long enough to see the fulfilment of his political prophecies, and the horrors of that dreadful revolution which he had predicted and disliked, not because the principles which the French apostles of liberty advocated, were not abstractedly true, but because they were connected with excesses, and an infidel recklessness in the violation of established social rights, which alarmed and disgusted him. He died in 1797, in the sixty-eighth year of his age, beloved and honored by the good and great in all Christian countries.

Next to Burke, among the prosecutors of Hastings, for greatness and popularity, was Charles James Fox. Charles James Fox; inferior to Burke in knowledge, imagination, and moral power, but superior in all the arts of debate, the most logical and accomplished forensic orator which that age of orators produced. His father, Lord Holland, had been the rival of the great Chatham, and he himself was opposed, nearly the whole of his public life, to the younger Pitt. His political principles were like those of Burke until the French Revolution, whose principles he at first admired. He was emphatically the man of the people, easy of access, social in his habits, free in his intercourse, without reserve or haughtiness, generous, magnanimous, and conciliatory. He was unsurpassed for logical acuteness, and for bursts of overpowering passion. He reached high political station, although his habits were such as destroyed, in many respects, the respect of those great men with whom he was associated.