assurances of the Nabob's friendship," of his gra titude for the “moderating part" which Hastings had played in many a recent controversy, and of his entire satisfaction with "every part" of that gentleman's conduct towards himself. "This," says Hastings, "was too honourable a testimony for me to receive with a safe conscience, but I can with an unblemished one affirm that I never opposed any interest to his but that of my employers."

Gleig's "Warren Hastings," Vol. 1. Chap. vi.

CHAPTER IV.

1772

THE future Governor of Fort William reached Calcuttta about the 20th February, 1772; his friends, the Imhoffs, who had sailed with him from Madras, landing in his train. It was not till April that Cartier, who had succeeded Verelst in 1770, the year of the dreadful famine, which slew millions of people in Bengal, and left half the land a desert, handed over to Hastings the keys of office, a failing treasury, and a government sadly out of gear. Ever since Clive's departure from Bengal in 1767, the Company's affairs had been going more and more amiss. The rich provinces won by his sword, had been left in the hands of native governors and agents, who fleeced their own countrymen in the name of a puppet Nawáb, living in idle state at Murshidábád on the noble income secured to him by the Company. An army of Faujdars, Amils,

Sardárs, and such like gentry preyed, like leeches, upon the people, and intercepted the revenues designed for the Company's use. The English supervisors, appointed in 1769 to check these abuses, and to look after the revenue, were, in Hastings' words, "the boys of the service," and "rulers, very heavy rulers, of the people.” Against the mischief caused by their ignorance or their greed, the Board of Revenue at Murshidábád strove vainly, if indeed it strove at all.

While trade languished, and money came in slowly at Calcutta, and the Company's servants laid new burdens on a rackrented and starving peasantry, the Company itself was paying in other ways the penalty of its transformation from a trading body into a political power. Besides the heavy tribute payable yearly to the Moghal Emperor for the right of governing Bengal and Bahar, and the large sums expended in governing those provinces through native officers, the India House magnates had to reckon at home with all the forces of popular prejudice, party rancour, and official jealousy. Macaulay has

66

* Gleig's "Warren Hastings," Vol. 1, Chap. vii. (letter to Dupré); see also Auber's British Power in India," Vol. 1, Chap. vi.

told us in his own brilliant periods, how the Nabobs who had grown rich in the Company's service, by means too often blamable, returned home to become the envy, the horror, or the laughing-stock of their untravelled neighbours.* The fabled wealth of Ind semed no longer a fable in view of these pushing upstarts, who bought their way at all costs into the House of Commons, and eclipsed the splendour of the wealthiest county lords. The fame of their riches gave the Ministers of George III. a handle for fresh inroads on the revenues of a Company, whose new political greatness was held to clash with the paramount rights of the Crown. In vain did the Court of Directors appeal on this point from Lord North to the Parliament. They were glad to compound the matters in dispute, by agreeing to pay the nation £400,000 a year for the privilege of holding at the Crown's pleasure the dominions they had won by treaty from Shah Alam. From these, and other causes, it happened that the Company's debts in England and India had risen to more than two millions, or little less than the whole of their actual revenue.

On the 13th April, 1772, Hastings entered * Macaulay's Essay on Lord Clive.

formally on his new duties. For some weeks past he had been steadily engaged, as he wrote to his friend Dupré, in “reading, learning, but not inwardly digesting." It was now his turn to act. No one could have seen more clearly how much was comprehended in that word; but he had hopes of able and willing support from his colleagues, and he wished for nothing

more.

*

Within a fortnight, the new Governor of Bengal had taken the first steps towards effecting a noteworthy revolution in the affairs of that province. Hitherto its internal government had been entrusted to a Naib Dewán, or deputy governor, who, in the Company's name, wielded almost supreme power in almost every department of the State. He had to look after all matters concerning the revenue, the police, the law-courts, civil, and criminal, as well as the management of the young Nawáb's household. Under the nominal control of the Company, he had become, indeed, as Hastings put it, "in everything but name the Názim (ruler) of the province, and in real authority more than the Názim." The officer to whom these large

* Gleig's "Warren Hastings," Vol. 1, Chap. vii.