CHAPTER XIV.

Continuation of Discords-Attacks on the private Character of Mr. Hastings-General Correspondence.

AMID Squabbles such as these, in every respect discreditable to those with whom they originated and were carried on, the remainder of the year 1774 went out. There was no prospect of better things in store, to throw a halo over the dawn of the year that succeeded. The Benares treaty and the Rohilla war continued still to furnish fruitful topics of discussion, which, as men's passions became inflamed, grew, from day to day, less reasonable and less honest. To such a height, indeed, was the hostility of the new members carried, that they did not scruple to make an avowal of their desire to blacken the character of the Governor-general, be the consequences what they might. "The justification of our own conduct," say they, in one of their memorable despatches to the Court of Directors, "must of necessity carry with it, and will only be supported by a strong and deliberate censure of the preceding administration.” Accordingly, having rung the changes for a while on these two flagrant offences, they turned their attention next to what may be termed the internal

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administration of the country; and there, not less than in his foreign politics, they saw nothing in the whole bent of Mr. Hastings's proceedings, except abundant ground of censure. His fiscal arrangements were passed in review before them, and condemned. The leasing system, on which the land revenues were raised, they pronounced to be a failure; the arrangements entered into for securing to the Company an increased benefit from the taxes on opium, were denounced; the bank which, with so much care, he had established in Calcutta, they treated as a nuisance, and its abolition was peremptorily ordered. Mr. Hastings would have

been more than mortal had he submitted to such usage without complaining. Both he and Mr. Barwell protested against the violence with which affairs were conducted, and threw themselves for support upon the home authorities.

Such was the state of feeling in the Supreme Council, the ostensible head of the government having become little better than a cypher, when certain events befel of which it is necessary to make mention, not more because of the influence which they exercised over the whole after life of the subject of this memoir, than because they give its peculiar character to an important page in English history.

In the month of January, 1775, died Shujah Dowlah, the sovereign of Oude, after consigning,

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with all solemnity, his son and successor, Murza Aumanee, to the protection of the British Government. One of the last acts, indeed, of the dying Nabob was to dictate a letter to Mr. Hastings, in which he implored the Governor to extend to his successor the same friendly feeling which he had himself uniformly experienced; without, however, entering at all into detail relative to any dispositions which he might have made for the due maintenance of his son's authority, or the distribution of his own accumulated wealth. I take especial notice of this circumstance, because, considering the terms on which the Vizier had long lived with Mr. Hastings, it seems difficult to believe that he would have concealed from the Governor-general the particulars of his last will, had they been in any way remarkable in their bearing; and as no such written deed was ever afterwards produced, the fair conclusion certainly seems to be that none such ever had existence.

The death of Shujah Dowlah brought immediately under the notice of the Supreme Council at Calcutta, two points of very great importance. First, a question was raised whether or not the treaty of alliance which Mr. Hastings had contracted with the deceased ought to be considered as binding in reference to his successor; and next, it rested with the British Government to decide how far they would sanction certain claims, which

the

the Begum, or widow of Shujah Dowlah, set up to be regarded as sole heir to the treasures of which her husband had died in possession. With respect to the former of these points, Mr. Hastings, supported as usual by Mr. Barwell, declared that there could be no room even for doubt. The treaties of Allahabad and Benares were clearly engagements between states. No change in the mere persons of the individuals by whom these states were governed could in any degree affect them, unless, indeed, there should be on one side or the other a positive violation of the terms; and hence, to speak of the voidance of the Company's engagements as a consequence necessary upon demise of Shujah Dowlah, was, in their opinion, to assert an absurdity. As well might Portugal claim the right of setting aside the Methuen treaty, on the ground that it had been contracted under a sovereign long dead, as the Company turn round and say to Ausuf ul Dowlah (for such was the title which the young Nabob assumed), "the treaty of Benares was a mere personal arrangement with your father; you can have no right to expect the smallest benefit from it." For though the sovereign of Oude owed allegiance to the Mogul, such allegiance was, and had long been, merely nominal; much more so, indeed, than was that of the English to the Nabobs of Bengal, when they claimed, by virtue of their phirmauns,

the right to occupy Fort William, and waged war against their sovereigns as often as they presumed to question that right.

It may be harsh to assume that the mere circumstance of this view of the case having been adopted by Mr. Hastings was sufficient to influence the majority in the adoption of its opposite. Probably there were other motives at work, but however this may be, the majority came to the conclusion that with the decease of Shujah Dowlah all political connexion between the Company and the state of Oude ceased, and that if he desired its continuance, the new sovereign must be content to negociate upon a basis altogether novel. Now considering that in their first communications to the Court of Directors they had reprobated the Governor-general, on the plea that his single object in concluding the treaty was to bring money into the exhausted treasury at Calcutta,-that they blamed him for the extent of his exactions, and held up to scorn the miserable policy of letting out a portion of the Company's army for hire; the obvious inference for the reader to draw is, that having created for themselves an opportunity of dissolving such a discreditable compact, they would promptly and eagerly take advantage of it; and marching back the brigade within the limits of their own territories, leave the young prince to stand or fall by his own resources. Was such their line