Colonization and Christianity / A popular history of the treatment of the natives by the / Europeans in all their colonies

by William Howitt

Benares had been a tributary of Oude; but in 1764, when the English commenced war against the Nabob of Oude, the Rajah of Benares joined the English, and rendered them the most essential services. For these he was taken under the English protection. At first with so much delicacy and consideration was he treated, that a resident was not allowed, as in the case of other tributaries, to reside in his capital, lest in the words of the minute of the Governor-general in command in 1775: “such resident might acquire an improper influence over the Rajah and his country, which would in effect render him master of both; lest it should end,” as they knew that such things as a matter of course did end, “in reducing him to the mean and depraved state of a mere Zemindar.” The council expressed its anxiety that the Rajah’s independence should be in no way compromised than by the mere fact of the payment of his tribute, which, says Mills, continued to be paid with an exactness rarely exemplified in the history of the tributary princes of Hindustan. But unfortunately, the Rajah gave some offence to the powerful Warren Hastings, and there was speedily a requisition made upon him for the maintenance of three battalions of Sepoys, estimated at five lacs of rupees. The Rajah pleaded inability to pay it forthwith; but five days only were given him. This was followed by a third and fourth requisition of the same sort. Seeing how the tide was running against him, the unhappy Rajah sent a private gift of two lacs of rupees to Mr. Hastings,—the pretty sum of 20,000l., in the hope of regaining his favour, and stopping this ruinous course of exaction. That unprincipled man took the money, but exacted the payment of the public demand with unabated rigour, and even fined him 10,000l. for delay in payment, and ordered troops, as he had done before, to march into his country to enforce the iniquitous exaction!

The work of diplomatic robbery on the Rajah now went on rapidly. “The screw was now turned” with vigour,—to use a homely but expressive phrase, the nose was held desperately to the grind-stone. No bounds were set to the pitiless fury of spoliation, for the Governor’s revenge had none; and besides, there was a dreadful want of money to defray the expenses of the wars with Hyder into which the government had plunged. “I was resolved,” says Hastings, “to draw from his guilt” (his having offended Mr. Hastings—the guilt was all on the other side) “the means of relief to the Company’s distresses. In a word, I had determined to make him pay largely for his pardon, or to exact a severe vengeance for his past delinquency.”[16] What this delinquency could possibly be, unless it were not having sent Mr. Hastings a second present of two lacs, is not to be discovered; but the success of the first placebo was not such as to elicit a second. The Rajah, therefore, tried what effect he could produce upon the council at large; he sent an offer of TWENTY LACS for the public service. It was scornfully rejected, and a demand of FIFTY lacs was made! The impossibility of compliance with such extravagant demands was what was anticipated; the Governor hastened to Benares, arrested the Rajah in his own capital; set at defiance the indignation of the people at this insult. The astounded Rajah made his escape, but only to find himself at war with his insatiable despoilers. In vain did he propose every means of accommodation. Nothing would now serve but his destruction. He was attacked, and compelled to fly. Bidgegur, where, says Hastings himself, “he had left his wife, a woman of amiable character, his mother, all the other women of his family, and the survivors of the family of his father, Bulwant Sing,” was obliged to capitulate; and Hastings, in his fell and inextinguishable vengeance, even, says Mills, “in his letters to the commanding officer, employed expressions which implied that the plunder of these women was the due reward of the soldiers; and which suggested one of the most dreadful outrages to which, in the conception of the country, a human being could be exposed.”

The fort was surrendered oh express stipulation for the safety, and freedom from search, of the females; but, adds Mills, “the idea suggested by Mr. Hastings diffused itself but too perfectly amongst the soldiery; and when the princesses, with their relatives and attendants, to the number of three hundred women, besides children, withdrew from the castle, the capitulation was shamefully violated; they were plundered of their effects, and their persons otherwise rudely and disgracefully treated by the licentious people, and followers of the camp.” He adds, “one is delighted for the honour of distinguished gallantry, that in no part of the opprobrious business the commanding officer had any share. He leaned to generosity and the protection of the princesses from the beginning. His utmost endeavours were exerted to restrain the outrages of the camp; and he represented them with feeling to Mr. Hastings, who expressed his concurrence, etc.”

The only other consolation in this detestable affair is, that the soldiers, in spite of Hastings, got the plunder of the Rajah, and that the Court of Directors at home censured his conduct. But these are miserable drops of satisfaction in this huge and overflowing cup of bitterness,—of misery to trusting, friendly, and innocent people; and of consequent infamy on the British name.

We must, out of the multitudes of such cases, confine ourselves to one more. The atrocities just recited had put Benares into the entire power of the English, but it had only tended to increase the pecuniary difficulties. The soldiery had got the plunder—the expenses of the war were added to the expenses of other wars;—some other kingdom must be plundered, for booty must be had: so Mr. Hastings continued his journey, and paid a visit to the Nabob of Oude. It is not necessary to trace the complete progress of this Nabob’s friendship with the English. It was exactly like that of the other princes just spoken of. A treaty was made with him; and then, from time to time, the usual exactions of money and the maintenance of troops for his own subjection were heaped upon him. As with the Nabob of Arcot, so with him, they were ready to sanction and assist him in his most criminal views on his neighbours, to which his need of money drove him. He proposed to Mr. Hastings, in 1773, to assist him in exterminating the Rohillas, a people bordering on his kingdom; “a people,” says Mills, “whose territory was, by far, the best governed part of India: the people protected, their industry encouraged, and the country flourishing beyond all parallel.” It was by a careful neutrality, and by these acts, that the Rohillas sought to maintain their independence; and it was of such a people that Hastings, sitting at table with his tool, the Nabob of Oude, coolly heard him offer him a bribe of forty lacs of rupees (400,000l.) and the payment of the troops furnished, to assist him to destroy them utterly! There does not seem to have existed in the mind of Hastings one human feeling: a proposition which would have covered almost any other man with unspeakable horror, was received by him as a matter of ordinary business. “Let us see,” said Hastings, “we have a heavy bonded debt, at one time 125 lacs of rupees. By this a saving of near one third of our military expenses would be effected during the period of such service; the forty lacs would be an ample supply to our treasury; and the Vizir (the Nabob of Oude) would be freed from a troublesome neighbour.” These are the monster’s own words; the bargain was struck, but it was agreed to be kept secret from the council and court of Directors. In one of Hastings’ letters still extant, he tells the Nabob, “should the Rohillas be guilty of a breach of their agreement (a demand of forty lacs suddenly made upon them—for in this vile affair everything had a ruffian character—they first demanded their money, and then murdered them), we will thoroughly exterminate them, and settle your excellency in the country.”[17] The extermination was conducted to the letter, as agreed, as far as was in their power. The Rohillas defended themselves most gallantly; but were overpowered,—and their chief, and upwards of a hundred thousand people fled to the mountains. The whole country lay at the mercy of the allies, and the British officers themselves declared that perhaps never were the rights of conquest more savagely abused. Colonel Champion, one of them, says in a letter of June 1774, published in the Report alluded to below, “the inhumanity and dishonour with which the late proprietors of this country and their families have been used, is known all over these parts. A relation of them would swell this letter to an enormous size. I could not help compassionating such unparalleled misery, and my requests to the Vizir to shew lenity were frequent, but as fruitless as even those advices which I almost hourly gave him regarding the destruction of the villages; with respect to which he always promised fair, but did not observe one of his promises, nor cease to overspread the country with flames, till three days after the fate of Hafez Rhamet was decided.” The Nabob had frankly and repeatedly assured Hastings that his intention was to exterminate the Rohillas, and every one who bore the name of Rohilla was either butchered, or found his safety in flight and in exile. Such were the diabolical deeds into which our government drove the native princes by their enormous exactions, or encouraged them in, only in the end to enslave them the more.

Before the connexion between the English and Oude, its revenue had exceeded three millions sterling, and was levied without being accused of deteriorating the country. In the year 1779, it did not exceed one half of that sum, and in the subsequent years it fell far below it, while the rate of taxation was increased, and the country exhibited every mark of oppressive exaction.[18] In this year the Nabob represented to the council the wretched condition to which he was reduced by their exactions: that the children of the deceased Nabob had subsisted in a very distressed manner for two years past; that the attendants, writers, and servants, had received no pay for that period; that his father’s private creditors were daily pressing him, and there was not a foot of country which could be appropriated to their payment; that the revenue was deficient fifteen lacs, (a million and a half sterling); that the country and cultivation were abandoned; the old chieftains and useful attendants of the court were forced to leave it; that the Company’s troops were not only useless, but caused great loss to the revenue and confusion in the country; and that the support of his household, on the meanest scale, was beyond his power.

This melancholy representation produced—what?—pity, and an endeavour to relieve the Nabob?—no, exasperation. Mr. Hastings declared that, both it and the crisis in which it was made were equally alarming. The only thing thought of was what was to be done if the money did not come in? But Mr. Hastings, on his visit to the Nabob at Lucknow, made a most lucky discovery. He found that the mother and widow of the late Nabob were living there, and possessed of immense wealth. His rapacious mind, bound by no human feeling or moral principle, and fertile in schemes of acquisition, immediately conceived the felicitous design of setting the Nabob to strip those ladies, well known to English readers since the famous trial of Mr. Hastings, as “the Begums.” It was agreed between the Nabob and Mr. Hastings, that his Highness should be relieved of the expense which he was unable to bear, of the English troops and gentlemen; and he, on his part, engaged to strip the Begums of both their treasure and their jaghires (revenues of certain lands), delivering to the Governor-general the proceeds. As a plea for this most abominable transaction, in which a prince was compelled by his cruel necessities and the grinding exactions and threats of the English to pillage forcibly his near relatives, a tale of treason was hatched against these poor women. When they refused to give up their money, the chief eunuchs were put to the torture till the ladies in compassion gave way: 550,000l. sterling were thus forced from them: the torture was still continued, in hope of extracting more; the women of the Zenana were deprived of food at various times till they were on the point of perishing for want; and every expedient was tried that the most devilish invention could suggest, till it was found that they had really drawn the last doit from them. But what more than all moves one’s indignation against this base English Inquisitor, was, that he received as his share of these spoils the sum of ten lacs, or 100,000l.!—and that notwithstanding the law of the Company against the receipt of presents; its avowed distress for want of money; and the poverty of the kingdom of Oude, which was thus plundered and disgraced from the very inability to pay its debts, if debts such shameful exactions can be called. Hastings did not hesitate to apprise the council of what he had received, and requested their permission to retain it for himself.

Of the numerous transactions of a most wicked character connected with these affairs; of the repugnance of the Nabob to do the dirty work of Hastings on his relatives, the Begums; of the haughty insolence by which his tyrant compelled him to the compact; of the restoration of the jaghires, but not the moneys to the Begums; of the misery and desolation which forced itself even upon the horny eyes of Hastings as he made his second progress through the territories of Oude, the work of his own oppressions and exactions; of the twelve and a half millions which he added by his wars and political manœuvres to the Indian debt—we have not here room to note more than the existence of such facts, which are well known to all the readers of Indian history, or of the trial of Warren Hastings, where every artifice of the lawyers was employed to prevent the evidence of these things being brought forward; and where a House of Peers was found base or weak enough to be guided by such artifices, to refuse the most direct evidence against the most atrocious transactions in history; and thus to give sanction and security to the commission of the most dreadful crimes and cruelties in our distant colonies. Nothing could increase from this time the real power of the English over Oude, though circumstances might occasion a more open avowal of it. Even during the government of Lord Cornwallis and Sir John Shore, now Lord Teignmouth, two of the most worthy and honourable rulers that British India ever had, the miseries and exactions continued, and the well-intentioned financial measures of Lord Cornwallis even tended to increase them. In 1798, the governor, Sir John Shore, proceeded to depose the ruling Nabob as illegitimate (a plea on which the English set aside a number of Indian princes), and elevated another in his place, and that upon evidence, says the historian, “upon which an English court of law would not have decided against him a question of a few pounds.”

It was not, however, till 1799, under the government of the Marquis Wellesley, that the hand of British power was stretched to the utmost over this devoted district. That honest and avowed usurper, who disdained the petty acts of his predecessors, but declared that the British dominion over the peninsula of India must be frankly avowed and fearlessly asserted—certainly a much better doctrine than the cowardly and hypocritical one hitherto acted upon;—that every Englishman who did not belong to the Company must and should be expelled from that country; and that the English power and the Corporate monopoly should be so strenuously and unflinchingly exerted, that foreign aggression or domestic complaint should be alike dispersed;—this straightforward Governor-general soon drove the Nabob of Oude to such desperation, by the severity of his measures and exactions, that he declared his wish to abdicate. Nothing could equal the joy of the Governor-general at the prospect of this easy acquisition of this entire territory: but that joy was damped by discovering that the Nabob only wished to resign in favour of—his own son! The chagrin of the Governor-general on this discovery is not to be expressed; and the series of operations then commenced to force the Nabob to abdicate in favour of the Company; when that could not be effected, to compel him to sacrifice one half of his territories to save the rest; when that sacrifice was made, to inform him that he was to have no independent power in his remaining half—is one of the most instructive lessons in the art of diplomatic fleecing, of forcing a man out of his own by the forms of treaty but with the iron-hand of irresistible power, which any despot who wishes to do a desperate deed handsomely, and in the most approved style, can desire. It was in vain that the Nabob declared his payment of exactions; his hereditary right; his readiness shewn on all occasions to aid and oblige; the force of treaties in his favour. It was in vain that he asked to what purpose should he give up one half of his dominions if he were not to have power over the other, when it was to secure this independent power that he gave up that half? What are all the arguments of right, justice, reason, or humanity, when Ahab wants the vineyard of Naboth, and the Jezebel of political and martial power tells him that she will give it him? The fate of Oude was predetermined, along with that of various other states, by the Governor-general, and it was decided as he determined it should be.