with to purchase favour. But he had the faculty of impressing all with whom he came into personal contact that, though diminutive in form and delicate in feature, he possessed indomitable energy, profound sagacity, and an iron will. They thought he was the sort of man they wanted; and the next decade in the annals of annexation is identified with the name of Warren Hastings.

CHAPTER VII.

WARREN HASTINGS.

1771-1773.

"In such a state of affairs, what influence can exist except that of fear? Can those who have been deprived of their power and their wealth like the Government who have been the instruments of their ruin? Is it possible that their relations, friends, and former dependants, should not sympathise with them? And will not the people, who are taxed with much greater severity than they ever were before, be ready to concur in their complaints? The ruin of the upper classes (like the exclusion of the people from a share in the government) was a necessary consequence of the establishment of the British power; but had we acted on a more liberal plan, we should have fixed our authority on a much more solid foundation."

UNTIL

-F. J. SHORE.1

the year 1773, the English possessions in India. were governed by the three separate Councils of Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta, each of them presided over by one of their number specially designated by the Directors at home for the performance of that duty. Between these independent and co-equal Governments, no little jealousy prevailed. Their local interests were often different, and they were separated from each other, not only by distance and diversity of circumstances, but by mutual jealousy and distrust. As their respective relations with the native states grew more complex, their need of one another's aid in time of peril grew more plain. Concerted action and unity of policy was every year more obviously desir

1 Notes on Indian Affairs, vol. i. p. 162.

F

able; and to secure this unity, the Minister of the day recommended Parliament to create a supreme executive at Calcutta, which should in all great affairs control the two remaining Presidencies, and to erect at the same time in the future metropolis of British India, a High Court of Judicature, invested with unlimited jurisdiction, civil as well as criminal, over all English settlers in the East, and over all matters wherein they might in any way be concerned.

By an Act passed in 1773, Government for the first time explicitly assumed paramount authority over the English possessions in Asia. George III. and his Ministers had long coveted this increase of patronage and power; but it was not until the Board of Directors came for a loan of £1,500,000 to the Treasury, to meet their excess of expenditure, that the opportunity arose for effecting so great a change. For five years the heavy quit-rent to the State and the dividend of 10 per cent. to the proprietary had been punctually paid; but the price of stock steadily went down, and at length, in the autumn of '72, Leadenhall Street found itself on the brink of insolvency. Lord North readily agreed to a loan from the Exchequer, adequate to meet all pressing wants. He intimated at the same time, however, that the executive should henceforth be regarded as supreme in all questions of acquired territory, and that a provincial administration, political, military, and judicial, must be nominated by the Home Government, though paid for out of the revenues of the Company. Its internal constitution, moreover, would be modified so as to restrict the constituent votes by whom the Directors were to be chosen, to persons registered for twelve months as holders of £1000 of stock. This sweeping measure of disfranchisement and of centralisation raised a storm of opposition in the City. Corporate privileges were said to be

endangered, and both Houses were prayed to hear counsel at the bar. The prayer was granted, and some eight-andtwenty Whig commoners, and about as many peers, divided against the principal clauses of the bill. Their resistance eventually availed nothing. A Governor-General with four colleagues, to hold office for five years, were named in the Act, and a supreme tribunal of justice, to sit at Calcutta, as a court of appeal from all inferior jurisdictions, whether native or English, was in the same manner established. General Clavering, Mr Philip Francis, Colonel Monson, and Mr Barwell, were named in the Act as the colleagues of Warren Hastings, the new Proconsul of Hindustan.

When it had served its turn, this first imperial statute for India was superseded, and most of its provisions were swept away among the dead leaves of legislation. But one clause remains to be ever memorable in the history of modern society-more pregnant with consequences than all the statutes taken together enacted in the longest reign of English kings. To eke out the help they needed in their plight of financial embarrassment, the Company asked and obtained a remission of the duty on tea imported in their vessels. For clearness' sake, the additional port-dues of 3d. in the pound chargeable in the colonies was declared to be repealed. Parliament took upon itself to confer this fiscal boon on the Transatlantic as well as home provinces of the Empire, by declaring that the drawback should be allowed in both upon all tea borne in the East India Company's bottoms. The King was fooled with a device which Lord Hillsborough assured him would entrap the colonists, by the bait of a remitted duty, into acknowledging the right of taxation in Parliament, which they had in the case of the Stamp Act so stoutly denied. Speakers in

opposition warned Ministers that the people of Pennsylvania and New England were not likely to be thus beguiled; and the event soon verified their prognostics. Upon acquiescence in that arrogant assumption to remit imposts, the converse right to impose them manifestly hung. The colonists. would admit neither, and, to show that they were in earnest, they flung the cargoes of tea free of duty into Boston harbour. We all know what followed.

Meanwhile, the ablest man in the Company's service, Warren Hastings, was, apparently without opposition, nominated Governor-General of India. He had filled the chair of President in Bengal for the two preceding years, to the satisfaction of the Company. Several of his acts had indeed drawn down on him the censure of the Opposition in Parliament; but the merits of the questions at issue were ill understood, and no audible objection was heard when he was named for the newly-created dignity. Why was he chosen? and what had he done to earn this high distinction? What was the character of the man, that the responsible advisers of the Crown should confide to him so great a trust? In their early instructions the Board of Directors positively forbade the assumption of a military position, and enjoined a peaceful adherence to strictly commercial objects. But Hastings had no mind to obey these suggestions further than in name. There was neither rapid fortune nor the reputation of a conqueror to be made thereby. Clive's example had, in fact, debauched all the adventurous and unscrupulous class who were at this time, and for many years after, in the East. The affairs of the Company at home were in great embarrassment; Hastings took advantage of this on the one hand, and the Ministers of the Crown took advantage of it on the other.

The new President wrote to the Secret Committee