“To this description, which makes humanity shudder, let us add other objects, equally shocking. Let imagination enlarge upon them, if possible. Let us represent to ourselves, infants deserted, some expiring on the breasts of their mothers; everywhere, the dying and the dead mingled together; on all sides, the groans of sorrow and the tears of despair; and we shall then have some faint idea of the horrible spectacle which Bengal presented for the space of six weeks.
“During this whole time, the Ganges was covered with carcases; the fields and highways were choked up with them; infectious vapours filled the air, and diseases multiplied; and one evil succeeding another, it appeared not improbable that the plague would carry off the total population of that unfortunate kingdom. It appears, by calculations pretty generally acknowledged, that the famine carried off a fourth part, that is to say—about three millions! What is still more remarkable, is, that such a multitude of human creatures, amidst this terrible distress, remained in absolute inactivity. All the Europeans, especially the English, were possessed of magazines. These were not touched. Private houses were so too. No revolt, no massacre, not the least violence prevailed. The unhappy Indians, resigned to despair, confined themselves to the request of succours they did not obtain; and peacefully awaited the relief of death.
“Let us now represent to ourselves any part of Europe afflicted with a similar calamity. What disorder! what fury! what atrocious acts! what crimes would ensue! How should we have seen amongst us Europeans, some contending for their food, dagger in hand, some pursuing, some flying, and without remorse massacring one another! How should we have seen men at last turn their rage on themselves; tearing and devouring their own limbs; and, in the blindness of despair, trampling under foot all authority, as well as every sentiment of nature and reason!
“Had it been the fate of the English to have had the like events to dread on the part of the people of Bengal, perhaps the famine would have been less general and less destructive. For, setting aside, as perhaps we ought, every charge of monopoly, no one will undertake to defend them against the reproach of negligence and insensibility. And in what a crisis have they merited that reproach? In the very instant of time in which the life or death of several millions of their fellow-creatures was in their power. One would think that in such alternative, the very love of humankind, that sentiment innate in all hearts, might have inspired them with resources.”—i. 460–4.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE ENGLISH IN INDIA, CONTINUED.—TREATMENT OF THE NATIVES, CONTINUED.
“If,” says the same historian, in whose language we concluded the last chapter, “to this picture of public oppressions we were to add that of private extortions, we should find the agents of the Company almost everywhere exacting their tribute with extreme rigour, and raising contributions with the utmost cruelty. We should see them carrying a kind of inquisition into every family, and sitting in judgment on every fortune; robbing indiscriminately the artizan and the labourer; imputing it often to a man, as a crime, that he is not sufficiently rich, and punishing him accordingly. We should view them selling their favour and their credit, as well to oppress the innocent as to oppress the guilty. We should find, in consequence of these irregularities, despair seizing every heart, and an universal dejection getting the better of every mind, and uniting to put a stop to the progress and activity of commerce, agriculture, and population.” This, which is the language of a foreigner, was also the language of the Directors at the same period, addressed to their servants in India. They complained that their “orders had been disregarded; that oppression pervaded the whole country; that youths had been suffered with impunity to exercise sovereign jurisdiction over the natives, and to acquire rapid fortunes by monopolizing commerce.” They ask “whether there be a thing which had not been made a monopoly of? whether the natives are not more than ever oppressed and wretched?” They were just then appointing Mr. Hastings their first Governor-general, and expressed a hope that he would “set an example of temperance, economy, and application.” Unfortunately Mr. Hastings set an example of a very different kind. It was almost immediately after his appointment to his high station that he entered into that infamous bargain with the Nabob of Oude for the extermination of the Rohillas; and during his government scarcely a year passed without the most serious charges being preferred against him to the supreme council, of which he himself was the head, of his reception of presents and annuities contrary to the express injunctions of the Company, and for the purpose of corrupt appointments. In 1775 he was charged with the receipt of 15,000 rupees, as a bribe for the appointment of the Duan of Burdwan, or manager of the revenues; in 1776, of receiving an annual salary from the Phousdar of Hoogly of 36,000 rupees for a similar cause. About the same time it came out too, that in 1772, that is, immediately on entering the governorship, he received from the Munny Begum a present of one lac and a half of rupees, for appointing her the guardian and superintendent of the affairs of the Nabob of Bengal, a minor; and the same sum had been received by Mr. Middleton, his agent. The council felt itself bound to receive evidence on these charges. The Maha Rajah Nundcomar, who had been appointed to various important offices by Mr. Hastings himself, came forward and accused the governor of acquitting Mahmud Reza Khan, the Naib Duan of Bengal, and Rajah Shitabroy the Naib Duan of Bahar, of vast embezzlements in their accounts, and also offered proof of the bribe of upwards of three and a half lacs from Munny Begum and Rajah Gourdass. What answer did he make to these charges? He refused to enter into them; but immediately commenced a prosecution of Nundcomar, on a charge of conspiracy; which failing, he had him tried on a charge of forgery, said to be committed five years before. On this he was convicted by a jury of Englishmen, and hanged, though the crime was not capital by the laws of his country. This was a circumstance that cast the foulest suspicions upon him. It was said that a man standing in the position and peculiar circumstances of the governor, accused of the high crimes of bribery and corruption, would, had he been innocent, have used every exertion to have saved the life of an accuser, had he been prosecuted by others, instead of himself hastening him out of the way; which must leave the irresistible conviction in the public mind, of his own guilt. But on the celebrated trial of Mr. Hastings, this was exactly the mode in which every accusation was met. When the most celebrated men of the time had united to reiterate these and other charges; when he stood before the House of Peers, impeached by the Commons, instead of standing forward as a man conscious of his innocence, and glad of the opportunity to clear his name from such foul taint, every technical obstruction which the ingenuity of his council could devise was thrown in the way of evidence. When the evidence of this Rajah Nundcomar, as taken by the supreme council of Calcutta, was tended, it was rejected because it was not given in the council upon oath; though Mr. Hastings well knew that the Hindoos never gave evidence upon oath, being contrary to their religion; that it was never required,—that this very evidence had been received by the council as legal; and that he himself had always contended during his own government, that such evidence was legal. When a letter of Munny Begum was presented, proving the reception of her bribe by Mr. Hastings, that letter was not admitted because it was merely a copy, though an attested one; the original letter itself was however produced, and persons high in office in India at the time of the transaction, came forward to swear to the hand and seal as those of the Begum. And what then? the original letter itself was rejected because it made part of the evidence before the council, which had been rejected before on other grounds!
Such was the manner in which these and the other great charges against this celebrated governor, which we have noticed in a former chapter, were met. Every piece of decisive evidence against him was resisted by every possible means: so that had he been the most innocent man alive, the only conviction that could remain on the mind of the public must have been that of his guilt. He had neither acted like an innocent, high-minded man, to whom the imputation of guilt is intolerable, himself in India, nor had his advocates in England been instructed to do so. Evidence on every charge, of the most conclusive nature, was offered, and resolutely rejected; and spite of all the endeavours to clear the memory of Warren Hastings of cruelty and corruption, the very conduct of himself and his counsel on the trial, must stamp the accusing verdict indelibly on his name.
But his individual conduct is here of no further concern than to shew what must have been the contagion of his example, and what the license given by the House of Peers, by the rejection of evidence in such a case, to all future adventurers in India. Well might Burke exclaim, “That it held out to all future governors of Bengal the most certain and unbounded impunity. Peculation in India would be no longer practised, as it used to be, with caution and with secresy. It would in future stalk abroad at noon-day, and act without disguise; because, after such a decision as had just been made by their lordships, there was no possibility of bringing into a court the proofs of peculation.” And indeed every misery which the combined evils of war, official plunder, and remorseless exaction could heap upon the unhappy natives, seems to have reigned triumphant through the British provinces and dependencies of India at this period. The destructive contests with Hyder Ali, the ravages of the English and their ally, the Nabob of Arcot, in Tanjore and the Marawars, were necessarily productive of extreme ruin and misery. During Mr. Hastings’ government the duannee, or management of the revenues was assumed in Bengal by the English. Reforms both in the mode of collecting the taxes and in the administration of justice were attempted. The lands were offered on leases of five years, and those leases put up to auction to the best bidders. The British Parliament in 1773 appointed a Supreme Court of Judicature, in which English judges administered English law. But as the great end aimed at was not the relief of the people, but the increase of the amount of taxation, these changes were only disastrous to the natives. Native officers were in many cases removed, and the native ryots only the more oppressed. Every change, in fact, seemed to be tried except the simple and satisfactory one of reducing the exactions and cultivating the blessings of peace. Ten years after these changes had been introduced, and had been all this time inflicting unspeakable calamities on the people, Mr. Dundas moved inquiry into Indian affairs, and pronounced the most severe censures on both the Indian Presidencies and the Court of Directors. He accused the Presidencies, and that most justly, of plunging the nation into wars for the sake of conquest, of contemning and violating treaties, and plundering and oppressing the people of India. The Directors he charged with blaming the misconduct of their servants only when it was unattended with profit, and exercising a very constant forbearance as often as it was productive of gain or territory.