A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III

by Justin McCarthy; Justin H. McCarthy

Nand Kumar's trial ended in conviction, and conviction for forgery brought with it by the English law sentence of death. Whatever may be thought of the crime of forgery in England, it certainly was not looked upon in India by Indians as a criminal offence of a kind that called for the severest penalty of the law. But Nand Kumar had been tried by English law. His judges, in order to show their fidelity not merely to the spirit but to all the forms of English law, had worn their heavy wigs all through the torrid heat of those Calcutta June days. By the English law he was convicted and sentenced to death. The triumvirate made little or no attempt to save the man on whose word they had relied. On August 5, 1775, Nand Kumar was hanged on the Maidan outside Calcutta. He met his death with the composed courage of a man who looked upon himself as a martyr. Whatever his offences may have been, he had done nothing which in his own eyes, or in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen, called for the pitiless punishment which fell upon him.

Of course, the important question is how far, if at all, {263} Hastings was concerned in the death of Nand Kumar. That is just the question which it is impossible to answer definitely. The certain facts are that Nand Kumar was Hastings's enemy, that Impey was Hastings's friend; that at a moment of grave crisis in Hastings's life, when Nand Kumar was the most eminent witness against his name and fame, that witness, was arraigned on a charge that was very old, that had been suddenly converted from a civil to a criminal charge; that he was tried, found guilty, and executed. On the basis of that bare narrative of facts it would seem that if Hastings had nothing to do with the matter, he might almost as well have had as far as the judgment of posterity went. The thing was too apt, the conditions too peculiar not to leave their stigma upon the memory of the man who gained most by them.

At the same time it must be remembered that, however black the arguments against Hastings may seem, there is no positive proof that he was directly implicated in what his enemies called the judicial murder of Nand Kumar. It must be remembered that the writer who has gone most deeply into the whole ugly story, Sir James Stephen, in his careful "Story of Nuncomar," has after long and exhaustive analysis of every particular of the case recorded his judgment in favor of Impey and of Hastings. Sir James Stephen's judgment is not final, indeed, but it must have weight with any one who attempts impartially to appreciate two public men who have been accused for more than a century of a terrible crime. Sir James Stephen believes that Nand Kumar's trial was perfectly fair, that Hastings had no share whatever in the prosecution, and that there was no collusion of any kind between Hastings and Impey with regard to the trial, the verdict, or the execution. Every one must form as best he may his own judgment upon the matter and the men; but Sir James Stephen's opinion is one that must be taken into account in any attempt to decide.

The death of Nand Kumar did not end the struggle between Hastings and his three antagonists. While they made no further attempt of a like kind—the fate of Nand {264} Kumar, said Francis, would prevent any further native information against the Governor-General—they still resolutely strove by all possible means to cross and check him. It is not necessary to follow in all their mean and wearisome details the particulars of that prolonged conflict. The odds were against Hastings until the death of Monson, when, by means of his own casting vote and the adhesion of Barwell, Hastings found himself the master of the majority at the Council-table. But the persistence of the attacks had their result at home, where an ill-advised offer of resignation made by Hastings was seized upon by the Directors of the Company. The resignation was accepted, Wheler was appointed Governor-General in his stead, and pending his arrival in India the post was to be filled by Clavering.

This was a severe blow for Hastings. At first he thought of yielding to it, in which case his career in India would have been closed. But Clavering's indecent eagerness to seize upon the Governor-Generalship before it was fairly vacant forced Hastings to defiance. He refused to surrender his office to Clavering. Clavering called upon the army to support him. Hastings called upon the army to stand fast by him. The army followed Hastings, and the support of the men of the sword was followed by the support of the men of the robe. The judges of the Supreme Court backed up Hastings and censured Clavering, and a little later Clavering's death left Hastings for the time supreme in the Council-chamber. His supremacy was contested after the arrival of Wheler, who immediately sided with Francis against Hastings. But the supremacy was not overthrown. Hastings was in the majority; he would not allow the alliance of Francis and Wheler to impede him in his purposes, and he stuck to his post as Governor-General.

The East India Company made no effort to enforce his resignation. The Court of Directors resented his conduct, and found fault with him persistently, but they could not overlook his influence with the Court of Proprietors, and the condition of affairs in India was too grave to make the {265} dismissal of Hastings wise or politic. The Government bore Hastings little love, and the King in particular was much incensed at his refusal to resign, and was all for his recall and the recall of Barwell who had abetted, and the judges who had supported him. But the struggle with the American colonies absorbed the attention of the Administration too closely to allow them to interfere so markedly in the affairs of India at a moment when interference might perhaps have a result not unlike the civil war.

[Sidenote: 1702-82—Haidar the bitter enemy of the English]

English opposition was not the only difficulty that Warren Hastings had to contend with. Like the monarch in the Arabian tale who discerns armies marching against his capital from every point of the compass, Hastings found enemies rising up against him in all directions. A league of three native powers menaced the safety of the British possessions. The Mahratta states combined with the Nizam of the Deccan. Both again combined with a new power whose rise had been as rapid as it was alarming, the Mohammedan power of Haidar in Mysore. When Warren Hastings arrived in India the second time Haidar was in his sixty-seventh year. He was born in 1702 as the son of a Mogul officer in the Punjaub. At his death Haidar held a rank somewhat similar to that of a captain in the service of the Emperor of Delhi. Haidar deemed, and rightly deemed, that there was little or no opportunity for his ambition in that service, and his eyes seeking for a better chief, found the man in Nunjeraj, the nominal vizier and real ruler of the Rajah of Mysore. In 1750 Haidar persuaded the troops under his command to leave their Mogul prince and take service with the sovereign of Mysore. Under that sovereignty he rose rapidly to distinction. Though he was little better than a robber chieftain, the ablest and most daring robber of a horde of robbers, his power grew so rapidly that in time he was able to supplant Nunjeraj, and in the end to usurp the sovereignty of Mysore in 1761.

Haidar had his bitter grudge against the English. In 1771 he had been badly beaten by the Mahrattas and had appealed to the English to help him, as they had {266} undertaken by treaty to do. But the help was refused to the defeated prince, and the defeated prince swore an oath of vengeance against the English, and when the time seemed ripe he did his best to keep his oath. When in 1779 France declared war against England, Haidar declared in favor of the French. He gave his sword to the service of the Grand Confederacy in 1778 and prepared to march upon Madras. The President and the Council were taken unawares. It was not until Haidar had marched with fire and sword into the Carnatic, and that the smoke of the villages he destroyed in his progress could be seen from Madras, that they learned that Haidar was in earnest and not merely making a menace in the hope of frightening the English into an advantageous treaty. Hastings himself seems to have been convinced that Haidar did not mean to attack the Company, but when the Mysore prince's purpose was plain every effort was made to stay his onset. Lord Macartney, although not one of the Company's servants, was made Governor of Madras. Haidar was compelled for the time to abandon his attempt upon the Carnatic. In 1783 his hatred of the English was ended by his sudden death. But he bequeathed it as a rich legacy to his son Tippu, a man as daring and as ambitious as his sire.

Hastings won away by concessions the Mahrattas and the Nizam from the cause of Tippu. But Tippu had his French allies, and Tippu and his French allies carried on a campaign successful enough to force the English practically to appeal for a peace, which Tippu accorded in a treaty flattering at once to his pride and to his ambition. It was a somewhat dearly bought peace for the English, for Tippu, regarding the advances of the English as a proof of their weakness, made demands far more arrogant than his successes justified, and those demands were agreed to by the English envoys. The treaty with Tippu had to be made on a basis of mutual restitution of conquests, so that England was left at the end of the struggle against Mysore with a great loss both of men and money, and no advantages, territorial or strategical, to set against the loss. Even the peace upon these terms obtained did not prove {267} a lasting peace. Tippu was not unnaturally tempted by the concessions of the English into further displays of arrogance which in time inevitably resulted in another war. But by the time that war broke out Warren Hastings had returned to England and had no further personal concern with the affairs of British India.