THE TRUTH ABOUT ROHILKHAND. 155 shed in pure wantonness, some part of the country laid waste. Shuja-ad-daula was neither worse nor better than the average of Eastern rulers. But it was not likely that the new master of Rohilkhand would turn a rich province into a desert, or exterminate the very people to whose industry he would look for increased revenues. At one elbow he had Colonel Champion, at the other Hastings' own accredited agent, Middleton, both empowered to remonstrate freely, and the latter even to use threats, on the side of humanity and fair play. Colonel Champion was a good officer, but his feelings often ran away with his judgement, and his jealousy of Middleton sharpened his readiness to believe whatever he heard told against the Nawab-Vazír. The complaints which he forwarded to Calcutta were often at variance with the reports which Hastings received from Middleton. Hastings could only remind the Colonel that, up to a certain point, he had ample means of inclining the Nawab towards the side of mercy, if he chose to employ them. In his letters to Middleton the Governor enjoined him to use all his influence in behalf of the family of Háfiz Rahmat, to remonstrate with the NawabVazír against every act of cruelty or wanton violence to his new subjects, to impress him with the English abhorrence "of every species of inhumanity and oppression," and, if need were, to work upon his fears of losing the future countenance of his English neighbours.* Few men have ever suffered so cruelly as Hastings, from the malice of his enemies and the mis-statements of one-sided critics. A pamphleteer of his own day coolly affirmed that 500,000 Rohilla families were driven across the Jamna, and that Rohilkhand was a barren and unpeopled waste. Mill asserts that " "every one who bore the name of Rohilla was either butchered or found his safety in flight and in exile." And Macaulay, improving on Colonel Champion, tells us how "more than a hundred thousand people fled from their homes to pestilential jungles," rather than endure the tyranny of him to whom a Christian Government had "sold their substance, and their blood, and the honour of their wives and daughters;" Hastings looking on with folded arms, "while their villages were burned, their children butchered, and their women violated." The truth, as I have shown, was widely different. The "extermination" of * Gleig's "Warren Hastings," Vol. 1, Chap. xii. UNJUST ATTACKS ON HASTINGS. 157 Behind the Rohillas meant the banishment of a few Pathan chiefs with seventeen or eighteen thousand of their soldiers from the lands which they or their fathers had won by the sword. Some thousands of them stayed behind with Faizulla Khán and other chiefs of the same stock. also remained nearly a million Hindu husbandmen, who were "in no way affected" by the change of masters, but would certainly have starved if the whole country had been laid waste. Instead of looking carelessly on at scenes of unparallelled outrage, Hastings did all he fairly could to stay the hand of a conqueror, whose carelessness for others' sufferings was tempered by a keen regard for his own interests. After all, however, it must be admitted that this Rohilla campaign is one of the few passages in Hastings' career on which no impartial critic can look back with much complacency. Even the Court of Directors qualified their entire approval of the Treaty of Banáras by demurring to the employment of their troops in a war waged by a foreign ruler. The misdeeds of Shuja-addaula have cast their shadow on the memory of him whose policy ensured the conquest of Rohilkhand. * Hamilton's "History of the Rohilla Afghans." BOOK III. CHAPTER I. -1774. THUS far the Governor of Fort William has been sailing along through waters seldom ruffled by an adverse breeze. His work has indeed been heavy; but its progress has been hampered by few collisions, whether with his colleagues in India or with the Company at home. With the means allowed him, within the limits prescribed by the Court of Directors, he has succeeded in laying fast the foundations of civilised rule over the provinces won by the sword of his old master, Clive. In the prime of manhood, for he was barely forty-two at the close of the Rohilla War, he was still apparently in vigorous health after CHANGES IN THE COMPANY'S RULE. 159 many years of constant toil in a tropical climate, to which so many Englishmen have owed an early death or a life of prolonged suffering. Of his private life at this period Mr. Gleig can tell us nothing; but it may be assumed that he had his moments of recreation among his favourite books, his friends of whom he counted many, and in the company of her whom he would soon be free to make his wedded wife. Nor were those dear ones at home forgotten, whose lives his bounty had so long helped to cheer. If the good will of his employers-the esteem of friends -the gratitude of kinsfolk-coupled with the near prospect of wedded happiness and a pleasingsense of great power successfully wielded for the general good, could make a man happy in the midst of many cares and trials, Hastings at this moment had little cause for murmuring at his lot. But evil days were already in store for him. In 1773 Parliament passed a Regulating Act which revised the whole machinery of the Company's affairs. It was ordained that each Director should retain his post for four years instead of one. The qualification for a vote in the Court of Proprietors was raised from £500 to £1,000 stock, and no Proprietor could claim |