INDIA.] POPULAR INSURRECTION AGAINST HIM. 307 ness and self-command as when seated quietly in his chamber at Calcutta, or beneath his garden-trees at Allipore — he wrote to the agent charged to treat with the Mahratta chiefs, giving him such detailed instructions as by the last advices that negotiation needed. The sure conveyance of these letters was now no easy task; but here again the fertile mind of Hastings was ready with a scheme. Having reduced them to the smallest compass, and rolled them into pieces of quill, he intrusted them to some well-tried HIRCARRAHS, or Hindoo messengers, who, by his orders, taking out their earrings, concealed them in their ears. Thus did these men pass safely and without detection through the hostile throng. Meanwhile, although the chief part of the insurgents had left Benares, and joined the prince beyond the river, the position of Hastings in the city continued full of peril. Not only was the insurrection general through the district of Benares; it was spreading through great part of the misgoverned state of Oude; it was threatening even the British province of Bahar. New passions began to ferment, and new hopes to rise. Cheyte Sing himself, instead of further pleas for mercy, was beginning to dream of conquest and revenge. Hastings and his small band, even though reinforced by some recruits, and by the boatmen who had brought them to Benares, could no longer hope to maintain themselves as a mere vanguard in the midst of foes. He set forth from the city by night, yet not unobserved, the rabble hooting him as he rode along with a jingling rhyme, not yet forgotten in Benares.* Unassailed, however, on this occasion, except in words, he made his way successfully to the * "Hat' hee pur howdah, ghore pur jeen "Juldee bah'r jata Sahib Warren Husteen!" "Horse, elephant, howdah, set off at full speed, "It is a nursery rhyme which is often sung to children (at Benares)," says Bishop Heber. (Journals, vol. i. p. 438. ed. 1828.) Both the Bishop and another eminent writer of our own day appear to be in error when they consider this a song in praise of Hastings instead of in triumph over him, See a note to Impey's Memoirs of Sir Elijah, p. 234. rock-fortress of Chunar. There he was quickly joined by a protecting force; at its head the brave and enterprising Major Popham, the conqueror of Gwalior. Against such troops, and such a chief, the rabble of Cheyte Sing, now swelled to forty thousand, could not stand. The Hindoo prince was utterly routed and driven from his states. One of his kinsmen was in his stead named Rajah of Benares, but his yearly tribute was raised to forty Lacs of Rupees, and he became on all points a mere stipendiary and subject of the English, soon to be removed, as he had been appointed, by their sovereign will. Nothing was left to Cheyte Sing beyond the fortress of Bidgegur, which held his treasure, and which the princess his mother defended. After a siege of several weeks the place was reduced by Major Popham. The treasure - after all Cheyte Sing's pleas of utter poverty, at the commencement of the contest-was found to exceed in value 250,000l. But it did not, as Hastings hoped, go to replenish the coffers of Bengal; it was seized by the army as prize. The fault here lay mainly in the Governor-General himself; in his own hasty letters and own inconsiderate expressions, during the heat of the siege. On reviewing the whole of this transaction, which in the impeachment of Hastings formed the great Benares charge, we find its real facts utterly distorted by the ardour of both sides. While Fox and Burke, in urging it, allege the vilest motives and most heinous crimes, not even the shadow of an indiscretion is allowed by Mr. Nicholls, or by Major Scott. Between the two extreme parties, thus fiercely warring upon Indian affairs, there arose a great Minister, free from any party-trammels with either. The judgment of Mr.Pitt, expressed, for the first time, in his speech of June, 1786, was formed, as he states, after a long and laborious study of the question. On nearly all points he approved the course of Hastings. He maintained that the Governor-General was entitled to consider Cheyte Sing as a feudatory prince, and to call upon him for extraordinary aid. He maintained that Cheyte Sing had shown contumacy in refusing such aid; and that, in INDIA.] HIS CONDUCT REVIEWED. 309 punishment of his contumacy, Hastings had good right to impose on him a fine. "But," continued Mr. Pitt, "in fining "the Rajah 500,000 7. for a mere delay to pay 50,000 7., which "50,0007. he had actually paid, Mr. Hastings proceeded in "an arbitrary, tyrannical manner, and was not guided by "any principle of reason and justice. This proceeding de"stroyed all relation and connexion between the degrees of "guilt and punishment; . . . . that punishment was utterly "disproportionate and shamefully exorbitant." These weighty words did not merely at that time prevail did not merely, then, in fact, decide the great question of the day - Impeachment or no Impeachment; but they are now, as I conceive, confirmed and ratified by the voice of History. It is on that point, and that point alone, in the Benares Charge, the exorbitancy of the fine, that the voice of History may pronounce Hastings to have erred, no doubt led astray by his personal resentment and rancour against Cheyte Sing. An objection has indeed been raised to Mr. Pitt's discriminating censure, as though it were not adequate to support a vote of condemnation, since the question of a larger or a lesser fine can be no more than a difference in degree. Yet what is it but a difference in degree, that with children, for example, separates the chastisement which the legislator praises from that which he is bound to punish the chastisement which aims at correction from the chastisement tending to maim and to deform? Not far dissimilar, surely, is the relation of a liege-lord to his vassals, where the duty of protection goes side by side with the right of control. If Hastings could have felt remorse a feeling almost alien from his nature - he might have felt it when he found his aim in all this violence, the treasure at Bidgegur, diverted by his soldiers from the public uses which he had designed. But he only turned with the keener energy to his projects upon Oude. We have seen how, in 1775, Sujah Dowlah was succeeded, as Nabob and Visier, by his son Asaph ul Dowlah. One of the first acts of the new prince was to remove the *Parl. Hist. vol. xxvi. p. 111. seat of his government from Fyzabad to the rising city of Lucknow.* There remained, however, as sojourners in the palace of Fyzabad, the grandmother of the young Sovereign, and also his mother, the widow of Sujah Dowlah. These aged ladies were called the Begums or Princesses of Oude. ** They had kept possession of Sujah Dowlah's treasure, amounting, it was said, to upwards of 3,000,000l. They had also vast Jaghires, and maintained a princely state. On the other hand, Asaph ul Dowlah showed himself so careless and so prodigal, that he soon grew poor. Wholly given up to the most disgraceful vices, and lavishing his own Crown lands upon his minions, he neglected the welfare and aroused the resentment of his people. To secure himself from the effects of that resentment, and of his neighbours' warlike enterprises, he had asked the help of a British brigade. It had been most readily granted by Hastings, who foresaw that it would reduce him to the rank of a dependent prince, and who added the condition, that the Visier should defray its entire cost and charge. Under these circumstances, it was not long before the Visier's payments fell into arrear. He earnestly pleaded for the withdrawal of the troops, or for the remission of the money, at the very time when the Governor-General was bending his whole thoughts to the possible means of obtaining some further aid. On planning his north-western journey, Hastings had determined that, as soon as he had closed the affairs of Benares, he would take in hand those of Oude, and repair in person to Lucknow. His visit was anticipated by the eagerness of Asaph ul Dowlah, who came forth beyond the frontier to meet him. The Governor-General and the Visier passed several days together in the rock-fortress of Chunar. There it was that Hastings first unfolded his grand scheme for the relief of both. He proposed that Asaph ul Dowlah * Hamilton's East India Gazetteer, vol. ii. p. 132. ## LL Begum is a title of Turkish origin and the feminine of Beg, which "signifies Prince, both in Tartary and Turkey, but means no more than a 'trooper, both in Persia and in India." (Note to the Seir Mutakhareen, vol. i. p. 297.) INDIA.] IMPEY GOES TO LUCKNOW. 311 should resume the domains which he had improvidently granted, and also those which his father had bequeathed. But it was not merely in this manner that the Begums were to be despoiled. Another part of the scheme was to wring from them the larger portion of their treasure, the money thus accruing to be accepted by the English in liquidation of the arrears which they claimed from Oude. In this plan of Hastings for despoiling the princesses he had not even the merit of original invention. The idea was so simple and easy, that it had long since occurred, without prompting, to the mind of the Visier. He had at various times obtained from his mother and his grandame sums amounting to 630,0007. Against the last of these payments they had struggled to the utmost of their power. Nor did they yield until the Visier at last agreed to a treaty pledging himself on no account or pretence to make any further demand upon them; and to this treaty they had obtained the guarantee of the Council of Bengal, through the ascendancy, at that time, of Clavering and Monson, and contrary to the wish of Hastings. Thus then the faith of the English government was clearly pledged against the very course which an English Governor was attempting to pursue. Let it not be thought, however, that Hastings wanted (did ever an oppressor want?) pleas for his oppression. First, he might allege, with some show of reason, that, according to the Mahomedan law, the treasure of the late Visier belonged, of right, not to the widow, but to the son. Next he might point to the depositions of numerous witnesses, that upon the news of the outbreak in Benares some retainers of the two Begums had stirred up insurrection in Oude. It so happened that Sir Elijah Impey was at this very time engaged in a tour through the upper provinces a tour which he had undertaken partly for recreation and health, and partly, as was his duty, to inspect the local courts. He now offered Hastings to proceed to Lucknow, and receive the depositions of these witnesses in regular form. The offer was gladly accepted, and the depositions were accordingly received |