PART II.

But, to revert to those old days, for another History. thing also I thank God. I trust that both Clive LECT.VIII. and Warren Hastings, had they lived in our days, and done as they did, would, instead of winning a peerage or a pension, have ended their days in penal servitude, and would be held by all to have richly deserved their doom. I do not, therefore, thank God either for the peerage of the one, or for the pension of the other. But I do thank God that neither of them was ever sentenced to the punishment which, as a man, he had deserved. I believe the lowest state of hypocrisy is that in which, while the offender is punished, the punisher profits by his crime without atoning for it. From the canker of that Pharisaism the English character recoiled; that, I have no doubt, is the true, deep-seated, unavowable, instinctive cause of Hastings' acquittal. We were not prepared to restore to the Mogul emperor the provinces which we had undertaken to keep for him, and then sold to another. We were not prépared to restore Rohilcund to its independence, or the Soobahdar of Bengal to the provinces out of which we had tricked him, or Cheyte Sing to Benares and its spoiled treasures, or the Begums to Fyzabad. Much of the wrong, indeed, it was too late to undo; who could give back to the brave Shitab Roy of Behar, the spirit which we had broken, the life which our breach of faith had cut short? Much could not have been undone without greater wrong. It is unfortunately easier to make a man a puppet, than a puppet a man, and the titled pensioners of Moorshedabad nor to view all as crime in others, which, were we crimeless, might be so.

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were no longer capable of ruling. Much, lastly, PART II. could not have been undone without sacrifices History. which we were not prepared to make. I am glad, LECT.VIII, therefore, I repeat it, that we had not the face to make this man or that the scapegoat of our sins. Whilst the Company subsisted, whilst England retained her Indian conquests, it was right that Warren Hastings should go unscathed.

As to those glowing passages of Lord Macaulay's two biographies, of Clive and Warren Hastings, in which he speaks of the one as having "done and suffered much for the happiness of mankind," of the other as deserving a grave in Westminster Abbey-you will know by this time what they are worth. What these men were, apart from the glow of their talents, is best appreciated by comparing them with their obscurer Indian contemporaries. Rumbold and Impey exhibit to us their rapacity; Coote, Monro, Stuart, and others their selfishness, their insolent disregard of orders. As respects Warren Hastings, in particular, some of the touches in Lord Macaulay's apology become almost ludicrous when compared with the facts. He speaks of his "honourable poverty," when all that is certain respecting it is, that with a salary of 25.0007. a year, he is not known to have accepted bribes, though he asked leave to do so, and in all probability his wife did so for him; that he put out of the way by an iniquitous sentence the man who was his chief accuser; that he spen all he got, and corrupted the press for the sake of buying an acquittal, to the tune of 20,000l. a year. And as to his "fervent zeal for the public service," his mean thwarting of Lord Macartney, at

PART II. a time when the whole danger to England in History. India lay upon the latter, is a sufficient measure LECT.VIII. of what that zeal was, whenever the credit of

serving the State was likely to redound to another than himself.

There is one remarkable point, however, in Hastings' character, to which I have not alluded. Clive had won by his daring the enthusiastic loyalty of the sepoy. Warren Hastings ingratiated himself with the natives by speaking their language, by encouraging the study of their literature, by respecting their usages even in his most tyrannous proceedings. And when, towards the close of his life, he gave evidence before the Committee of the House of Lords,-on that celebrated occasion described by Lord Macaulay, when his examiners all rose at his departure,―he gave the following most remarkable statement.

"Great pains have been taken to inculcate into the public mind an opinion that the native Indians are in a state of complete moral turpitude, and live in the constant and unrestrained commission of every vice and crime that can disgrace human nature,-I affirm, by the oath that I have taken, that this description of them is untrue, and wholly unfounded. ... In speaking of the people, it is necessary to distinguish the Hindoos, who form the great portion of the population, from the Mahommedans, who are intermixed with them, but generally live in separate communities; the former are gentle, benevolent, more susceptible of gratitude for kindness shown to them, than prompted to vengeance by wrongs inflicted, and as exempt from the worst propensities of human passion, as any people on the face of the earth; they are faithful and affectionate in service, and submissive to legal authority; they are superstitious, it is true, but they do not think ill of us for not thinking as they do. Gross as their modes of worship are, the precepts of their religion are wonderfully fitted to promote the best ends of society, its peace and good order.

It is the fashion now, especially since the late

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LECT.VIII.

mutinies, to cry up Warren Hastings' rule; and PART II. this cry is the loudest in the mouth of those History. who speak of the natives with the greatest scorn and abhorrence, It would be well for such persons to ponder these words of their chosen hero.

And those who measure crimes by their immediate success, would do well to ponder this fact also. It is now eighty-four years since unoffending Rohilcund was subdued by the English arms, though not at first for England. The crime was successful. The peaceable loyalty of the Rohillas has of late years been pointed to as a stock argument for the eventual success of conquest or annexation. What do we see now? Rohilcund is once more to us a foreign country. We have hardly a foot of ground in it, and scarcely attempt as yet to hold one. Politically, Warren Hastings' work in this quarter is annihilated. But morally, the results subsist. The once noble Rohillas are murderers, like the men of Oude for whose benefit they were subdued. The massacre of Bareilly has only been cast into shade by the deeper gloom of the tragedies of Delhi and Cawnpore.

LECTURE IX.

ORGANIZATION OF THE BRITISH RULE IN INDIA (1785-1798).

LORD CORNWALLIS AND SIR JOHN SHORE.

THE ZEMINDAREE SETTLEMENT.

State of India at Warren Hastings' Departure-Beneficial Effects of his Trial-Mr. Macpherson-Lord Macartney's Ill-luck-Lord Cornwallis's Dealings with Oude and the Nizam-The Third Mysore War-Savendroog-First Siege of Seringapatam-Tippoo sues for Peace, and gives up half his Territory-Internal Organization-Administration of Justice-Police-"Regulations"-The Revenue SystemMussulman Views of Land-ownership and RevenueThe Zemindars, or Revenue Farmers-Mussulman Views adopted, and carried with them by the English-Their Results; early perceived by the English AuthoritiesThe Permanent Settlement, 1793; the Zemindars made Land-owners--The old Zemindars swept away by the Sale Laws-Effects of the Zemindaree System-Sir John Shore -Non-interference Policy-Rise of Scindia-French In fluence-Oude more and more Dependent-The Asiatic Society-Sir William Jones-Close of the First bright Era of British Indian History.

PART II. THE forty-two years over which the two last History. lectures extended, had produced a very great LECT.IX. change in the condition of India. When Warren

Hastings left India, the Mogul empire was simply the phantom of a name. The warlike tribes of the north-west, Sikhs, Rajpoots, Jâts, were henceforth independent; but the Rohillas of the north-east had been subdued and almost exterminated. Of the three greatest Soobahs or vice-royalties of the Mogul empire, at one time practically independent, that of Bengal had