INDIA.]

LORD NORTH'S REGULATING ACT.

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all grounds of personal hostility. "It is our wish," he said, "to make the East India Company a great and glorious "Company, and settle it upon a permanent foundation."* Under such patronage the Bill was passed by large majorities.

This Bill, however, could only be deemed, as a lawyer might have termed it, an arrest of judgment. Later during the same Session, in the spring of 1773, Lord North proposed and carried through, against all gainsayers, his own measure of reform. This, after it had passed, was commonly called the Regulating Act. In the first place, he granted to the Company a loan of 1,500,000l. for four years, and relieved them from the annual payment to the State of 400,000l. On the other hand, the Company was restrained from making any greater dividend than six per cent. until the loan should be repaid, or any greater dividend than eight per cent. until the public should have some participation in the profits. It was then enacted, that instead of annual elections of the whole number of Directors at the India House, six should go out of office each year, and none keep their seats longer than four years. At the same time, the qualification for a vote in each proprietor was raised from 500l. to 1000l., with more votes in proportion, up to four, to each proprietor of a larger sum.

In India, the Act provided that the Mayor's Court of Calcutta should be restricted in its jurisdiction to petty cases of trade, and that in its place should be constituted a Supreme Court, to consist of a Chief Justice, and three Puisne Judges, appointed by the Crown. The Governor of Bengal was henceforth to have authority over the other Presidencies, as Governor-General of India, but was himself to be controlled by his Council. In that Council, as previously, he was entitled only to a single or, in case of equality, a casting vote. It was proposed that these nominations, should be made by Parliament, and continue for five years; after which they should revert to the Direc

* Parl. Hist. vol. xvii. pp. 561. and 567.

tors, but subject to the approbation of the Crown. In the progress therefore of the Bill through the Commons, the Members of the new Council were expressly named, so as to become a part of the enactment. Warren Hastings, who a year before had assumed the administration of Bengal, was appointed the first Governor-General. Another of the new Council, Richard Barwell, was already at his post; the new Members to be sent from England were General Clavering, the Hon. Colonel Monson, and Philip Francis.

Another clause of Lord North's Bill remitted the drawback on the East India Company's Teas a step so little regarded at its outset, but so momentous in its consequences, and which has been fully treated in another place.* The Directors at the time were but little gratified with this boon, or any other, when compared with the curtailment of their previous powers. They declared, in a petition to the House, that they would rather forego the loan which they had solicited, than endure the conditions which the Minister imposed. But their late misgovernment had been such as to render, in Parliament at least, their adherents few and their lamentations disregarded.

In the course of these proceedings, both before the Committees and within the House, many a shaft was let fly at Lord Clive. Besides the public wrongs of which he stood accused, there was also, it may be feared, a feeling of personal envy at work against him. His vast wealth became a more striking mark for calumny when contrasted with the financial embarrassments of the Directors in whose service he had gained it. And his profusion, as ever happens, offended far more persons than it pleased. He had bought the noble seat of Claremont from the Duchess Dowager of Newcastle, and was improving it at lavish cost. He had so far invested money in the smaller boroughs that he could reckon on bringing into Parliament a retinue of six or seven friends and kinsmen.**Under such circumstances the Select Committee,

See vol. v. of this history, p. 332.

** Letter to Mr. Call, January 19. 1768. Malcolm's Life, vol. iii. p. 219.

INDIA.]

PARLIAMENTARY ATTACKS UPON CLIVE.

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over which Bourgoyne presided, made Clive their more espe cial object of attack. They drew forth into the light of day several transactions certainly not well formed to bear it, as the forgery of Admiral Watson's signature, and the fraud practised on Omichund. But at the same time they could not shut out the lustre of the great deeds he had performed. Clive himself was unsparingly questioned, and treated with slight regard. As he complains, in one of his speeches: "I, "their humble servant, the Baron of Plassey, have been exa"mined by the Select Committee more like a sheep - stealer "than a Member of this House!" And he adds, with perfect truth: "I am sure, Sir, if I had any sore places about me, 'they would have been found: they have probed me to the "bottom; no lenient plasters have been applied to heal; no, 'Sir, they were all of the blister kind, prepared with Spanish 'flies, and other provocatives!"

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On this and some other occasions Clive spoke in his own defence in a frank and fearless spirit, with great energy of language, and, it would seem, with great effect upon the House. He was likewise happy in the friendship and assistance of Mr. Wedderburn, then Solicitor General. It was in May, 1773, that the charges against him, till then vague and undefined, were brought forward as a vote of censure by Burgoyne. To the Government it became an open question. The Attorney General spoke strongly on the side of the accusers. The Solicitor General conducted the defence. A great number of placemen and King's Friends took the part of Clive, while the Prime Minister, Lord North, walked into the lobby against him. In the result, the first Resolutions of Burgoyne, alleging certain matters of fact that could scarcely be denied, were carried. But the next, which charged Lord Clive by name with having abused his powers, and set an evil example to the servants of the public, did not pass. At length, as the dawn was slowly breaking on the last of these long and stormy, and in many parts confused, debates, the House agreed almost unanimously to some words which Wedderburn moved: "That Robert Lord Clive did at the

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same time render great and meritorious services to his "country."

Such a vote might perhaps be deemed almost a verdict of acquittal. Certainly, at least, it showed a wise reluctance to condemn. It closed the whole case, and Clive had no further Parliamentary attack to fear. But the previous taunts and injuries appear to have sunk deep into his haughty mind. Nor was a life of ease, however splendid, congenial to his active temper. In his sumptuous halls of Claremont, or beneath the stately cedars of his park, he was far less really happy than amidst his former toils and cares, on the tented plains of the Carnatic or in the council-chambers of Bengal. Moreover, through the climate of the tropics, his health was most grievously impaired. He had to undergo sharp and oftrecurring spasms of pain, for which opium only could afford him its treacherous and transitory aid. At length, in November 1774, at his house in Berkeley Square, this great man, for such he surely was, fell by his own hand. He was not yet fifty years of age; and the contest in North America was just then beginning to hold forth to him a new career of active exertion, a new chaplet of honourable fame.

To the last, however, he appears to have retained his serene demeanour, and the stern dominion of his will. It so chanced, that a young lady, an attached friend of his family, was then upon a visit at his house in Berkeley Square, and sat, writing a letter, in one of its apartments. Seeing Lord Clive walk through, she called to him to come and mend her pen. Lord Clive obeyed her summons, and taking out his penknife fulfilled her request; after which, passing on to another chamber, he turned the same knife against himself. This tale, though traditional, has a high contemporary voucher. It was related by the Earl of Shelburne, afterwards the first Marquis of Lansdowne, to the person from whom I received it.

INDIA.]

WARREN HASTINGS.

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CHAPTER LXVIII.

INDIA.

WARREN HASTINGS, the first Governor-General of India, was born in 1732. He was sprung from a branch, or rather, as they alleged, the main stem, of the great old house of Hastings, from which in another line the Earls of Huntingdon descend. But at the time of little Warren's birth, his branch was fast decaying; and Daylesford, its ancient seat in Worcestershire, was already sold. It was only through the kindness of a kinsman that he obtained his education at Westminster School; and when that relative died he was shipped off at seventeen as a Writer to Bengal. He was noticed by Lord Clive as a man of promise. Under Mr. Vansittart he had much more opportunity to shine. Thus, through the various gradations of the Civil Service at that time, he sped with credit and success. Having married, but become a widower, he returned to England in 1765. But four years afterwards he was again sent forth as second in the Council of Madras; and early in 1772 he proceeded to a far higher, and, as it proved, more lasting post, as first in the Council of Bengal.

Spare in form and shrunk in features, with a mild voice and with gentle manners, Warren Hastings might seem to a casual observer as wanting in manly firmness. It is remarkable that, on his appointment as Governor of Bengal, Lord Clive deemed it right to warn him against this, as he imagined, the weak point of his character. "I thought,”thus writes Lord Clive from England, "I discovered in "you a diffidence in your own judgment and too great an "easiness of disposition, which may subject you insensibly "to be led where you ought to guide."* Never was an error

* Letter, August 1. 1771. Life by Malcolm, vol. iii. p. 260.