A crisis was now approaching in foreign affairs which demanded all the experience and all the genius of Hastings for its solution. Bengal was prosperous, and free from external enemies on every quarter. But the government of Bombay had hurried on a rupture with the Mahratta confederacy at a time when France was on the point of declaring war against England, and when the mother-country found herself unable to subdue her rebellious colonists in America. Hastings did not hesitate to take upon his own shoulders the whole responsibility of military affairs. All the French settlements in India were promptly occupied. On the part of Bombay, the Mahratta war was conducted with procrastination and disgrace. But Hastings amply avenged the capitulation of Wargaon by the complete success of his own plan of operations. Colonel Goddard with a Bengal army marched across the breadth of the peninsula from the valley of the Ganges to the western sea, and achieved almost without a blow the conquest of Gujarat. Captain Popham, with a small detachment, stormed the rock fortress of Gwalior, then deemed impregnable and the key of central India; and by this feat held in check Sindhia, the most formidable of the Mahratta chiefs. The Bhonsla Mahratta raja of Nagpur, whose dominions bordered on Bengal, was won over by the diplomacy of an emissary of Hastings. But while these events were taking place, a new source of embarrassment had arisen at Calcutta. The supreme court, whether rightly or wrongly, assumed a jurisdiction of first instance over the entire province of Bengal. The English common law, with all the absurdities and rigours of that day, was arbitrarily extended to an alien system of society. Zamíndárs, or government renters, were arrested on mesne process; the sanctity of the zenána, or women’s chamber, as dear to Hindus as to Mahommedans, was violated by the sheriff’s officer; the deepest feelings of the people and the entire fabric of revenue administration were alike disregarded. On this point the entire council acted in harmony. Hastings and Francis went joint-bail for imprisoned natives of distinction. At last, after the dispute between the judges and the executive threatened to become a trial of armed force, Hastings set it at rest by a characteristic stroke of policy. A new judicial office was created in the name of the Company, to which Sir Elijah Impey was appointed, though he never consented to draw the additional salary offered to him. The understanding between Hastings and Francis, originating in this state of affairs, was for a short period extended to general policy. An agreement was come to by which Francis received patronage for his circle of friends, while Hastings was to be unimpeded in the control of foreign affairs. But a difference of interpretation arose. Hastings recorded in an official minute that he had found Francis’s private and public conduct to be “void of truth and honour.” They met as duellists. Francis fell wounded, and soon afterwards returned to England.
The Mahratta war was not yet terminated, but a far more formidable danger now threatened the English in India. The imprudent conduct of the Madras authorities had irritated beyond endurance the two greatest Mussulman powers in the peninsula, the nizam of the Deccan and Hyder Ali, the usurper of Mysore, who began to negotiate an alliance with the Mahrattas. A second time the genius of Hastings saved the British empire in the east. On the arrival of the news that Hyder had descended from the highlands of Mysore, cut to pieces the only British army in the field, and swept the Carnatic up to the gates of Madras, he at once adopted a policy of extraordinary boldness. He signed a blank treaty of peace with the Mahrattas, who were still in arms, reversed the action of the Madras government towards the nizam, and concentrated all the resources of Bengal against Hyder Ali. Sir Eyre Coote, a general of renown in former Carnatic wars, was sent by sea to Madras with all the troops and treasure that could be got together; and a strong body of reinforcements subsequently marched southwards under Colonel Pearse along the coast line of Orissa. The landing of Coote preserved Madras from destruction, though the war lasted through many campaigns and only terminated with the death of Hyder. Pearse’s detachment was decimated by an epidemic of cholera (perhaps the first mention of this disease by name in Indian history); but the survivors penetrated to Madras, and not only held in check Bhonsla and the nizam, but also corroborated the lesson taught by Goddard—that the Company’s sepoys could march anywhere, when boldly led. Hastings’s personal task was to provide the ways and means for this exhausting war. A considerable economy was effected by a reform in the establishment for collecting the land tax. The government monopolies of opium and salt were then for the first time placed upon a remunerative basis. But these reforms were of necessity slow in their beneficial operation. The pressing demands of the military chest had to be satisfied by loans, and in at least one case from the private purse of the governor-general. Ready cash could alone fill up the void; and it was to the hoards of native princes that Hastings’s fertile mind at once turned. Chait Sing, raja of Benares, the greatest of the vassal chiefs who had grown rich under the protection of the British rule, lay under the suspicion of disloyalty. The wazir of Oudh had fallen into arrears in the payment due for the maintenance of the Company’s garrison posted in his dominions, and his administration was in great disorder. In his case the ancestral hoards were under the control of his mother, the begum of Oudh, into whose hands they had been allowed to pass at the time when Hastings was powerless in council. Hastings resolved to make a progress up country in order to arrange the affairs of both provinces, and bring back all the treasure that could be squeezed out of its holders by his personal intervention. When he reached Benares and presented his demands, the raja rose in insurrection, and the governor-general barely escaped with his life. But the faithful Popham rapidly rallied a force for his defence. The insurgents were defeated again and again; Chait Sing took to flight, and an augmented permanent tribute was imposed upon his successor. The Oudh business was managed with less risk. The wazir consented to everything demanded of him. The begum was charged with having abetted Chait Sing in his rebellion; and after the severest pressure applied to herself and her attendant eunuchs, a fine of more than a million sterling was exacted from her. Hastings appears to have been not altogether satisfied with the incidents of this expedition, and to have anticipated the censure which it received in England. As a measure of precaution, he procured documentary evidence of the rebellious intentions of the raja and the begum, to the validity of which Impey obligingly lent his extra-judicial sanction.
The remainder of Hastings’s term of office in India was passed in comparative tranquillity, both from internal opposition and foreign war. The centre of interest now shifts to the India House and to the British parliament. The long struggle between the Company and the ministers of the crown for the supreme control of Indian affairs and the attendant patronage had reached its climax. The decisive success of Hastings’s administration alone postponed the inevitable solution. His original term of five years would have expired in 1778; but it was annually prolonged by special act of parliament until his voluntary resignation. Though Hastings was thus irremovable, his policy did not escape censure. Ministers were naturally anxious to obtain the reversion to his vacant post, and Indian affairs formed at this time the hinge on which party politics turned. On one occasion Dundas carried a motion in the House of Commons, censuring Hastings and demanding his recall. The directors of the Company were disposed to act upon this resolution; but in the court of proprietors, with whom the decision ultimately lay, Hastings always possessed a sufficient majority. Fox’s India Bill led to the downfall of the Coalition ministry in 1783. The act which Pitt successfully carried in the following year introduced a new constitution, in which Hastings felt that he had no place. In February 1785 he finally sailed from Calcutta, after a dignified ceremony of resignation, and amid enthusiastic farewells from all classes.
On his arrival in England, after a second absence of sixteen years, he was not displeased with the reception he met with at court and in the country. A peerage was openly talked of as his due, while his own ambition pointed to some responsible office at home. Pitt had never taken a side against him, while Lord Chancellor Thurlow was his pronounced friend. But he was now destined to learn that his enemy Francis, whom he had discomfited in the council chamber at Calcutta, was more than his match in the parliamentary arena. Edmund Burke had taken the subject races of India under the protection of his eloquence. Francis, who had been the early friend of Burke, supplied him with the personal animus against Hastings, and with the knowledge of detail, which he might otherwise have lacked. The Whig party on this occasion unanimously followed Burke’s lead. Dundas, Pitt’s favourite subordinate, had already committed himself by his earlier resolution of censure; and Pitt was induced by motives which are still obscure to incline the ministerial majority to the same side. To meet the oratory of Burke and Sheridan and Fox, Hastings wrote an elaborate minute with which he wearied the ears of the House for two successive nights, and he subsidized a swarm of pamphleteers. The impeachment was decided upon in 1786, but the actual trial did not commence until 1788. For seven long years Hastings was upon his defence on the charge of “high crimes and misdemeanours.” During this anxious period he appears to have borne himself with characteristic dignity, such as is consistent with no other hypothesis than the consciousness of innocence. At last, in 1795, the House of Lords gave a verdict of not guilty on all charges laid against him; and he left the bar at which he had so frequently appeared, with his reputation clear, but ruined in fortune. However large the wealth he brought back from India, all was swallowed up in defraying the expenses of his trial. Continuing the line of conduct which in most other men would be called hypocrisy, he forwarded a petition to Pitt praying that he might be reimbursed his costs from the public funds. This petition, of course, was rejected. At last, when he was reduced to actual destitution, it was arranged that the East India Company should grant him an annuity of £4000 for a term of years, with £90,000 paid down in advance. This annuity expired before his death; and he was compelled to make more than one fresh appeal to the bounty of the Company, which was never withheld. Shortly before his acquittal he had been able to satisfy the dream of his childhood, by buying back the ancestral manor of Daylesford, where the remainder of his life was passed in honourable retirement. In 1813 he was called on to give evidence upon Indian affairs before the two houses of parliament, which received him with exceptional marks of respect. The university of Oxford conferred on him the honorary degree of D.C.L.; and in the following year he was sworn of the privy council, and took a prominent part in the reception given to the duke of Wellington and the allied sovereigns. He died on the 22nd of August 1818, in his 86th year, and lies buried behind the chancel of the parish church, which he had recently restored at his own charges.
In physical appearance, Hastings “looked like a great man, and not like a bad man.” The body was wholly subjugated to the mind. A frame naturally slight had been further attenuated by rigorous habits of temperance, and thus rendered proof against the diseases of the tropics. Against his private character not even calumny has breathed a reproach. As brother, as husband and as friend, his affections were as steadfast as they were warm. By the public he was always regarded as reserved, but within his own inner circle he gave and received perfect confidence. In his dealings with money, he was characterized rather by liberality of expenditure than by carefulness of acquisition. A classical education and the instincts of family pride saved him from both the greed and the vulgar display which marked the typical “nabob,” the self-made man of those days. He could support the position of a governor-general and of a country gentleman with equal credit. Concerning his second marriage, it suffices to say that the Baroness Imhoff was nearly forty years of age, with a family of grown-up children, when the complaisant law of her native land allowed her to become Mrs Hastings. She survived her husband, who cherished towards her to the last the sentiments of a lover. Her children he adopted as his own; and it was chiefly for her sake that he desired the peerage which was twice held out to him.
Hastings’s public career will probably never cease to be a subject of controversy. It was his misfortune to be the scapegoat upon whose head parliament laid the accumulated sins, real and imaginary, of the East India Company. If the acquisition of the Indian empire can be supported on ethical grounds, Hastings needs no defence. No one who reads his private correspondence will admit that even his least defensible acts were dictated by dishonourable motives. It is more pleasing to point out certain of his public measures upon which no difference of opinion can arise. He was the first to attempt to open a trade route with Tibet, and to organize a survey of Bengal and of the eastern seas. It was he who persuaded the pundits of Bengal to disclose the treasures of Sanskrit to European scholars. He founded the Madrasa or college for Mahommedan education at Calcutta, primarily out of his own funds; and he projected the foundation of an Indian institute in England. The Bengal Asiatic Society was established under his auspices, though he yielded the post of president to Sir W. Jones. No Englishman ever understood the native character so well as Hastings; none ever devoted himself more heartily to the promotion of every scheme, great and small, that could advance the prosperity of India. Natives and Anglo-Indians alike venerate his name, the former as their first beneficent administrator, the latter as the most able and the most enlightened of their own class. If Clive’s sword conquered the Indian empire, it was the brain of Hastings that planned the system of civil administration, and his genius that saved the empire in its darkest hour.
See G. B. Malleson, Life of Warren Hastings (1894); G. W. Forrest, The Administration of Warren Hastings (Calcutta, 1892); Sir Charles Lawson, The Private Life of Warren Hastings (1895); L. J. Trotter, Warren Hastings (“Rulers of India” series) (1890); Sir Alfred Lyall, Warren Hastings (“English Men of Action” series) (1889); F. M. Holmes, Four Heroes of India (1892); G. W. Hastings, A Vindication of Warren Hastings (1909). Macaulay’s famous essay, though a classic, is very partial and inaccurate; and Burke’s speech, on the impeachment of Warren Hastings, is magnificent rhetoric. The true historical view has been restored by Sir James Stephen’s Story of Nuncomar (1885) and by Sir John Strachey’s Hastings and the Rohilla War (1892), and it is enforced in some detail in Sydney C. Grier’s Letters of Warren Hastings to his Wife (1905), material for which existed in a mass of documents relating to Hastings, acquired by the British Museum.
(J. S. Co.)
HASTINGS, a municipal, county and parliamentary borough and watering-place of Sussex, England, one of the Cinque Ports, 62 m. S.E. by S. from London, on the South Eastern & Chatham and the London, Brighton & South Coast railways. Pop. (1901), 65,528. It is picturesquely situated at the mouth of two narrow valleys, and, being sheltered by considerable hills on the north and east, has an especially mild climate. Eastward along the coast towards Fairlight, and inland, the country is beautiful. A parade fronts the English Channel, and connects the town on the west with St Leonard’s, which is included within the borough. This is mainly a residential quarter, and has four railway stations on the lines serving Hastings. Both Hastings and St Leonard’s have fine piers; there is a covered parade known as the Marina, and the Alexandra Park of 75 acres was opened in 1891. There are also numerous public gardens. The sandy beach is extensive, and affords excellent bathing. On the brink of the West Cliff stand a square and a circular tower and other fragments of the castle, probably erected soon after the time of William the Conqueror; together with the ruins, opened up by excavation in 1824, of the castle chapel, a transitional Norman structure 110 ft. long, with a nave, chancel and aisles. Besides the chapel there was formerly a college, both being under the control of a dean and secular canons. The deanery was held by Thomas Becket, and one of the canonries by William of Wykeham. The principal public buildings are the old parish churches of All Saints and St Clements, the first containing in its register for 1619 the baptism of Titus Oates, whose father was rector of the parish; numerous modern churches, the town hall (1880); theatre, music hall and assembly rooms. The Brassey Institute contains a public library, museum and art school. The Albert Memorial clock-tower was erected in 1864. Educational institutions include the grammar school (1883), school of science and art (1878) and technical schools. At the west end of the town are several hospitals and convalescent homes. The prosperity of the town depends almost wholly on its reputation as a watering-place, but there is a small fishing and boat-building industry. In 1890 an act of parliament authorized the construction of a harbour, but the work, begun in 1896, was not completed. The fish-market beneath the castle cliff is picturesque. The parliamentary borough, returning one member, falls within the Rye division of the county. The county borough was created in 1888. The municipal borough is under a mayor, 10 aldermen and 30 councillors. Area, 4857 acres.