1770.

assignments, called in India, tuncaus, which entitled the holders to the revenues CHAP. IV. of some portion of the territory, and to draw them immediately from the collectors. While his embarrassments were by these means increased, the exactors were encouraged to greater severities.

In this situation the Nabob and the Presidency were both dissatisfied, and both uneasy. Finding his power annihilated, and his revenues absorbed, after feasting his imagination with the prospect of the unlimited indulgences of an Eastern prince, he regarded the conduct of the Presidency as the highest injustice. The gentlemen entrusted at once with the care of their own fortunes and the interests of the Company, for both of which they imagined that the revenues of Carnatic would copiously and delightfully provide, were chagrined to find them inadequate even to the exigencies of the government; and accused the Nabob, either of concealing the amount of the sums which he obtained, or of impairing the produce of the country by the vices of his government. ;

say

arrives as

India.

Upon the termination of the disputes in London, toward the end of the year Sir John Lind1769, between the Ministers of the Crown and the East India Company, King's Comrespecting the supervisors, and respecting the power of the King's naval officer to missioner in negotiate and to form arrangements with the Indian powers,* a marine force, consisting of some frigates of war, was commissioned under the command of Sir John Lindsay to proceed to the East Indies; "to give countenance and protection to the Company's settlements and affairs." In conformity with the terms to which the Company had yielded, they vested Sir John Lindsay with a commission to take the command of all their vessels of war in the Indian seas; and also, on their behalf, "to treat and settle matters in the Persian Gulph.”

So far, there was mutual understanding, clearness, and concert. But in addition to this, Sir John Lindsay was appointed, by commission under the great seal, his Majesty's Minister Plenipotentiary, with powers to negotiate and conclude arrangements, with the Indian sovereigns in general. This measure was not only contrary to what the Company had claimed as their right, against which the Minister appeared to have ceased, for the time, to contend; but it was a measure taken without their knowledge: and Sir John Lindsay appeared in India claiming the field for the exercise of his powers, before they or their servants had the smallest intimation that any such powers were in existence.

If there was a danger, which must strike every considerate mind, in sending Its dangerous two independent authorities, to act and clash together in the delicate and consequences.

* See the account of these disputes, supra, p. 287.

1770.

BOOK V. troubled scene of Indian affairs, a danger inevitable even if the circumstances had been arranged between the Ministers and the Company with the greatest harmony and the greatest wisdom, all the principles of mischief were naturally multiplied, and each strengthened to the utmost, by the present stroke of ministerial politics.

The ground upon which this disputed and imprudent exercise of power appears to have been placed was the eleventh article of the treaty of Paris, concluded in 1763. With a view to maintain peace in India, and to close the disputes between the English and the French, who, according to their own professions, appeared to have nothing else in view but to determine who was the just and rightful Nabob of Carnatic, who the just and rightful Subahdar of Deccan, it was there decided and agreed that the two nations should acknowledge Mahomed Ali as the one, and Salabut Jung as the other. It occurred to the ingenuity of practical statesmen, that the King of Great Britain, having become party to an article of a treaty, had a right, without asking leave of the Company, to look after the execution of that article; and hence to send a deputy duly qualified for that purpose. If this conferred a right of bestowing upon Sir John Lindsay the powers of an ambassador; it also conferred the right of avoiding altercation with the East India Company, by taking the step without their knowledge.

The power of looking after the due execution of the eleventh article of the treaty of Paris was not a trifling power.

It included, in the first place, the power of taking a part in all the disputes between the Nabob and the Company's servants; as Mahomed Ali was in that article placed upon the footing of an ally of the King of Great Britain, and hence entitled to all that protection which is due to an ally. The servants of the Company had been at some pains to keep from the knowledge of the Nabob the full import of the new relation in which he was placed to the British throne; as calculated most imprudently to inflame that spirit of ambition and love of independence, with which it was so difficult already to deal, and with the gratification of which the existence in the Carnatic either of his power or that of the Company was altogether incompatible. The band of Englishmen and others, who surrounded the Nabob, for the purpose of preying upon him, wished of course to see all power in his hands, that they might prey the more abundantly. They filled every place with their outcries against every restraint which was placed upon him and in particular had endeavoured, and with great success, to disseminate an opinion in England, that he was an oppressed and ill

treated prince, while the servants of the Company were his plunderers and CHAP. IV. tyrants.

Nor was this all. As the grand intent of the eleventh article of the treaty of Paris was to preserve peace between the English and other powers in India, and as there is nothing in the relations of one state to another which the care of peace may not be said to embrace, the whole international policy of the British government in India was, by the new ministerial expedient, deposited in the hands of the King's Minister Plenipotentiary.

On the 26th of July, 1770, Sir John Lindsay, after having remained some months at Bombay, arrived at Madras; and at once surprised and alarmed the servants of the Company by the declaration of his powers. In one of their first communications with Sir John, they say, "When you now inform us, you are invested with great and separate powers, and when we consider that those powers, in their operation, may greatly affect the rights of the Company, we cannot but be very much alarmed."* To their employers, the Court of Directors, they expound themselves more fully. "To give you a clear representation of the dangerous embarrassments through which we have been struggling, since the arrival of his Majesty's powers in this country, is a task far beyond our abilities. They grow daily more and more oppressive to us; and we must sink under the burthen, unless his Majesty, from a just representation of their effect, will be graciously pleased to recall powers, which, in dividing the national interest, will inevitably destroy its prosperity in India. Such is the danger; and yet we are repeatedly told, that it is to support that interest, by giving the sanction of his Majesty's name to our measures, that these powers were granted, and for that alone to be exerted. It has always been our opinion, that with your authority, we had that of our Sovereign, and of our nation, delegated to us. If this opinion be forfeited, your servants can neither act with spirit nor success; for under the control of a superior commission, they dare not, they cannot, exert the powers with which they alone are entrusted. Their weakness and disgrace become conspicuous; and they are held in derision by your enemies." +

The first of the requisitions which Sir John Lindsay made upon the President and Council was to appear in his train, when he went in state to deliver to the Nabob his Majesty's letter and presents. They considered, that, as the servants of the Company had heretofore been the medium through which all communi

* Letter to Sir John Lindsay, dated 16th August, 1770, Rous's Appendix, p. 254.

+ Letter to the Court of Directors, dated July 20th 1771, Ibid. p. 400.

1770.

1770.

BOOK V. cations to the princes of India had been made, and as they had been considered in India, the immediate representatives of the British Monarch, and the highest instrument of his government, they could not appear in the train of Sir John Lindsay without degradation in the eyes of the natives, and a forfeiture of the dignity and influence of the Company, which, as they had no instructions upon the subject, they did not think themselves at liberty to resign. With the assignment of these reasons, they respectfully signified to Sir John Lindsay the inability under which they found themselves to comply with his request. This brought on an interchange of letters, which soon degenerated into bitterness and animosity on both sides.*

Among the reasons which the President and Council assigned for declining to appear in the train of Sir John Lindsay, they had stated, that any suspicion, disseminated in the country, of the annihilation or diminution of the Company's power" might, at this crisis particularly, prove fatal to the existence of the Company, and the interests of the nation in India: because they were on the brink of a war with the most formidable power in India, which it would require 'all their efforts to avoid, while they feared that all their efforts would be insufficient." This apprehension was a good deal exaggerated, to serve the present purpose; and the exaggeration yielded an advantage to Sir John Lindsay of which he immediately availed himself. He was very sorry, he said, to find them on the brink of a dreadful war, which was all but inevitable: He pressed upon them the consideration of the importance of peace to a commercial body: And as he was sent out to watch over the execution of the eleventh article, of which peace was the main object, he begged they would lay before him such documents and explanations, as "would make him acquainted with the real state of the Company's affairs." He also informed them, that he was "commanded by his Majesty to apply to them for a full and succinct account of all their transactions with the Nabob of Arcot since the late treaty of Paris; and inquire with the utmost care into the causes of the late war with the Subah of the Deckan and Hyder Ali, and the reasons of its unfortunate consequences." § To this point the reply of the President and Council was in the following terms: "Duplicates of our records, and very minute and circumstantial details of all our transactions, have already been transmitted to the Court of Directors of the East India Company, our constituents. We have heard, that when an inquiry

at home into the state of the Company's affairs was thought necessary, it was CHAP.IV. signified by his Majesty's ministry to the Court of Directors, that they would 1770.

be called upon by parliament to produce their records; that they were accordingly called upon by parliament, and did produce them. This, we believe, was a constitutional course; but we have never heard, that the Company's papers and records were demanded by, or surrendered to, the ministry alone; for that we believe would be unconstitutional. The Company hold their rights by act of parliament; their papers and their records are their rights; we are entrusted with them here; we are under oath of fidelity, and under covenants, not to part with them; nevertheless all conditions are subservient to the laws, and when we shall be called upon in a legal and constitutional way, we shall readily and cheerfully submit ourselves, our lives, and fortunes, to the laws of our country. To break our oath and our covenants would be to break those laws. But we hold them sacred and inestimable, for they secure the rights and liberties of the people."*

widens the dif

Nabob and

Carnatic.

With as much jealousy and dislike as Sir John Lindsay was received by the Sir John President and Council; with so much cordiality and pleasure was he received by ference be the Nabob and those who surrounded him. To the Nabob he explained, that tween the he was come to recognize him as a fellow sovereign with the King of Great Presidency in Britain, and to afford him the protection of that great King against all his enemies. The Nabob, who had a keen Oriental eye for the detection of personal feelings, was not long a stranger to the sentiments with which his Majesty's Minister Plenipotentiary, and the Company's President and Council, regarded one another. He described the President and Council as his greatest enemies; for they withdrew the greater part of his revenue and power. Sir John, who was already prejudiced, and ignorant of the scene in which he was appointed to act, fell at once into all the views of the Nabob, and the crowd by whom he was beset. The Nabob laid out his complaints, and Sir John listened with a credulous ear. The Nabob described the policy which had been pursued with respect to the native powers, by the servants of the Company; and easily made it assume an appearance which gave it to the eye of Sir John a character of folly, or corruption, or both. He drew the line of policy which at the present moment it would have gratified his own wishes to get the Company to pursue; and he painted it in such engaging colours, that Sir John Lindsay believed it to be recommended equally by the sense of justice, and the dictates of wisdom.

* Ibid, p. 257.