|
We hasten to the end of this sad and disgraceful story. The war ceased. The
finest population in India was subjected to a greedy, cowardly, cruel tyrant.
Commerce and agriculture languished. The rich province which had tempted the
cupidity of Sujah Dowlah became the most miserable part even of his miserable
dominions. Yet is the injured nation not extinct. At long intervals gleams of
its ancient spirit have flashed forth; and even at this day, valor, and
self-respect, and a chivalrous feeling rare among Asiatics, and a bitter
remembrance of the great crime of England, distinguish that noble Afghan race.
To this day they are regarded as the best of all sepoys at the cold steel; and
it was very recently remarked, by one who had enjoyed great opportunities of
observation, that the only natives of India to whom the word "gentleman" can
with perfect propriety be applied, are to be found among the Rohillas.
Whatever we may think of the morality of Hastings, it cannot be denied that the
financial results of his policy did honor to his talents. In less than two years
after he assumed the government, he had without imposing any additional burdens
on the people subject to his authority, added about four hundred and fifty
thousand pounds to the annual income of the Company, besides procuring about a
million in ready money. He had also relieved the finances of Bengal from
military expenditure, amounting to near a quarter of a million a year, and had
thrown that charge on the Nabob of Oude. There can be no doubt that this was a
result which, if it had been obtained by honest means, would have entitled him
to the warmest gratitude of his country, and which, by whatever means obtained,
proved that he possessed great talents for administration.
In the meantime, Parliament had been engaged in long and grave discussions on
Asiatic affairs. The ministry of Lord North, in the session of 1773, introduced
a measure which mode a considerable change in the constitution of the Indian
Government. This law, known by the name of the Regulating Act, provided that the
presidency of Bengal should exercise a control over the other possessions of the
Company; that the chief of that presidency should be styled Governor-General;
that he should be assisted by four Councilors; and that a supreme court of
judicature, consisting of a chief justice and three inferior judges, should be
established at Calcutta. This court was made independent of the Governor-General
and Council, and was entrusted with a civil and criminal jurisdiction of immense
and, at the same time, of undefined extent.
The Governor-General and Councilors were named in the Act, and were to hold
their situations for five years. Hastings was to be the first Governor-General.
One of the four new Councilors, Mr. Barwell, an experienced servant of the
Company, was then in India. The other three, General Clavering, Mr. Monson, and
Mr. Francis, were sent out from England.
The ablest of the new Councilors was, beyond all doubt, Philip Francis. His
acknowledged compositions prove that he possessed considerable eloquence and
information. Several years passed in the public offices had formed him to habits
of business. His enemies have never denied that he had a fearless and manly
spirit; and his friends, we are afraid, must acknowledge that his estimate of
himself was extravagantly high, that his temper was irritable, that his
deportment was often rude and petulant, and that his hatred was of intense
bitterness and long duration.
It is scarcely possible to mention this eminent man without adverting for a
moment to the question which his name at once suggests to every mind. Was he the
author of the Letters Of Junius? Our own firm belief is that he was. The
evidence is, we think, such as would support a verdict in a civil, nay, in a
criminal proceeding. The handwriting of Junius is the very peculiar handwriting
of Francis, slightly disguised. As to the position, pursuits, and connections of
Junius, the following are the most important facts which can be considered as
clearly proved: first, that he was acquainted with the technical forms of the
Secretary of State's office; secondly, that he was intimately acquainted with
the business of the War Office; thirdly, that he, during the year 1770, attended
debates in the House of Lords, and took notes of speeches, particularly of the
speeches of Lord Chatham; fourthly, that he bitterly resented the appointment of
Mr. Chamier to the place of Deputy Secretary-at-War; fifthly, that he was bound
by some strong tie to the first Lord Holland. Now, Francis passed some years in
the Secretary of State's office. He was subsequently Chief Clerk of the War
Office. He repeatedly mentioned that he had himself, in 1770, heard speeches of
Lord Chatham; and some of these speeches were actually printed from his notes.
He resigned his clerkship at the War Office from resentment at the appointment
of Mr. Chamier. It was by Lord Holland that he was first introduced into the
public service. Now, here are five marks, all of which ought to be found in
Junius. They are all five found in Francis. We do not believe that more than two
of them can be found in any other person whatever. If this argument does not
settle the question, there is an end of all reasoning on circumstantial
evidence.
The internal evidence seems to us to point the same way. The style of Francis
bears a strong resemblance to that of Junius; nor are we disposed to admit, what
is generally taken for granted, that the acknowledged compositions of Francis
are very decidedly inferior to the anonymous letters. The argument from
inferiority, at all events, is one which may be urged with at least equal force
against every claimant that has ever been mentioned, with the single exception
of Burke; and it would be a waste of time to prove that Burke was not Junius.
And what conclusion, after all, can be drawn from mere inferiority? Every writer
must produce his best work; and the interval between his best work and his
second best work may be very wide indeed. Nobody will say that the best letters
of Junius are more decidedly superior to the acknowledged works of Francis than
three or four of Corneille's tragedies to the rest, than three or four of Ben
Jonson's comedies to the rest, than the Pilgrim's Progress to the other works of
Bunyan, than Don Quixote to the other works of Cervantes. Nay, it is certain
that Junius, whoever he may have been, was a most unequal writer. To go no
further than the letters which bear the signature of Junius; the letter to the
king, and the letters to Horne Tooke, have little in common, except the
asperity; and asperity was an ingredient seldom wanting either in the writings
or in the speeches of Francis.
Indeed one of the strongest reasons for believing that Francis was Junius is the
moral resemblance between the two men. It is not difficult, from the letters
which, under various signatures, are known to have been written by Junius, and
from his dealings with Woodfall and others, to form a tolerably correct notion
of his character. He was clearly a man not destitute of real patriotism and
magnanimity, a man whose vices were not of a sordid kind. But he must also have
been a man in the highest degree arrogant and insolent, a man prone to
malevolence, and prone to the error of mistaking his malevolence for public
virtue. "Doest thou well to be angry?" was the question asked in old time of the
Hebrew prophet. And he answered, "I do well." This was evidently the temper of
Junius; and to this cause we attribute the savage cruelty which disgraces
several of his letters. No man is so merciless as he who, under a strong
self-delusion, confounds his antipathies with his duties. It may be added that
Junius, though allied with the democratic party by common enmities, was the very
opposite of a democratic politician. While attacking individuals with a ferocity
which perpetually violated all the laws of literary warfare, he regarded the
most defective parts of old institutions with a respect amounting to pedantry,
pleaded the cause of Old Sarum with fervor, and contemptuously told the
capitalists of Manchester and Leeds that, if they wanted votes, they might buy
land and become freeholders of Lancashire and Yorkshire. All this, we believe,
might stand, with scarcely any change, for a character of Philip Francis.
It is not strange that the great anonymous writer should have been willing at
that time to leave the country which had been so powerfully stirred by his
eloquence. Everything had gone against him. That party which he clearly
preferred to every other, the party of George Grenville, had been scattered by
the death of its chief; and Lord Suffolk had led the greater part of it over to
the ministerial benches. The ferment produced by the Middlesex election had gone
down. Every faction must have been alike an object of aversion to Junius. His
opinions on domestic affairs separated him from the Ministry; his opinions on
colonial affairs from the Opposition. Under such circumstances, he had thrown
down his pen in misanthropical despair. His farewell letter to Woodfall bears
date the nineteenth of January, 1773. In that letter, he declared that he must
be an idiot to write again; that he had meant well by the cause and the public;
that both were given up; that there were not ten men who would act steadily
together on any question. "But it is all alike," he added, "vile and
contemptible. You have never flinched that I know of; and I shall always rejoice
to hear of your prosperity." These were the last words of Junius. In a year from
that time, Philip Francis was on his voyage to Bengal.
With the three new Councilors came out the judges of the Supreme Court. The
chief justice was Sir Elijah Impey. He was an old acquaintance of Hastings; and
it is probable that the Governor-General, if he had searched through all the
inns of court, could not have found an equally serviceable tool. But the members
of Council were by no means in an obsequious mood. Hastings greatly disliked the
new form of government, and had no very high opinion of his coadjutors. They had
heard of this, and were disposed to be suspicious and punctilious. When men are
in such a frame of mind, any trifle is sufficient to give occasion for dispute.
The members of Council expected a salute of twenty-one guns from the batteries
of Fort William. Hastings allowed them only seventeen. They landed in ill-humor.
The first civilities were exchanged with cold reserve. On the morrow commenced
that long quarrel which, after distracting British India, was renewed in
England, and in which all the most eminent statesmen and orators of the age took
active part on one or the other side.
Hastings was supported by Barwell. They had not always been friends. But the
arrival of the new members of Council from England naturally had the effect of
uniting the old servants of the Company. Clavering, Monson, and Francis formed
the majority. They instantly wrested the government out of the hands of
Hastings, condemned, certainly not without justice, his late dealings with the
Nabob Vizier, recalled the English agent from Oude, and sent thither a creature
of their own, ordered the brigade which had conquered the unhappy Rohillas to
return to the Company's territories, and instituted a severe inquiry into the
conduct of the war. Next, in spite of the Governor-General's remonstrances, they
proceeded to exercise, in the most indiscreet manner, their new authority over
the subordinate presidencies; threw all the affairs of Bombay into confusion;
and interfered, with an incredible union of rashness and feebleness, in the
intestine disputes of the Mahratta Government. At the same time, they fell on
the internal administration of Bengal, and attacked the whole fiscal and
judicial system, a system which was undoubtedly defective, but which it was very
improbable that gentlemen fresh from England would be competent to amend. The
effect of their reforms was that all protection to life and property was
withdrawn, and that gangs of robbers plundered and slaughtered with impunity in
the very suburbs of Calcutta. Hastings continued to live in the
Government-house, and to draw the salary of Governor-General. He continued even
to take the lead at the council-board in the transaction of ordinary business;
for his opponents could not but feel that he knew much of which they were
ignorant, and that he decided, both surely and speedily, many questions which to
them would have been hopelessly puzzling. But the higher powers of government
and the most valuable patronage had been taken from him.
The natives soon found this out. They considered him as a fallen man; and they
acted after their kind. Some of our readers may have seen, in India, a cloud of
crows pecking a sick vulture to death, no bad type of what happens in that
country, as often as fortune deserts one who has been great and dreaded. In an
instant, all the sycophants who had lately been ready to lie for him, to forge
for him, to pander for him, to poison for him, hasten to purchase the favor of
his victorious enemies by accusing him. An Indian government has only to let it
be understood that it wishes a particular man to be ruined; and, in twenty-four
hours, it will be furnished with grave charges, supported by depositions so full
and circumstantial that any person unaccustomed to Asiatic mendacity would
regard them as decisive. It is well if the signature of the destined victim is
not counterfeited at the foot of some illegal compact, and if some treasonable
paper is not slipped into a hiding-place in his house. Hastings was now regarded
as helpless. The power to make or mar the fortune of every man in Bengal had
passed, as it seemed, into the hands of the new Councilors. Immediately charges
against the Governor-General began to pour in. They were eagerly welcomed by the
majority, who, to do them justice, were men of too much honor knowingly to
countenance false accusations, but who were not sufficiently acquainted with the
East to be aware that, in that part of the world, a very little encouragement
from power will call forth, in a week, more Oateses, and Bedloes, and
Dangerfields, than Westminster Hall sees in a century.
It would have been strange indeed if, at such a juncture, Nuncomar had remained
quiet. That bad man was stimulated at once by malignity, by avarice, and by
ambition. Now was the time to be avenged on his old enemy, to wreak a grudge of
seventeen years, to establish himself in the favor of the majority of the
Council, to become the greatest native in Bengal. From the time of the arrival
of the new Councilors he had paid the most marked court to them, and had in
consequence been excluded, with all indignity, from the Government-house. He now
put into the hands of Francis with great ceremony, a paper, containing several
charges of the most serious description. By this document Hastings was accused
of putting offices up to sale, and of receiving bribes for suffering offenders
to escape. In particular, it was alleged that Mahommed Reza Khan had been
dismissed with impunity, in consideration of a great sum paid to the
Governor-General.
Francis read the paper in Council. A violent altercation followed. Hastings
complained in bitter terms of the way in which he was treated, spoke with
contempt of Nuncomar and of Nuncomar's accusation, and denied the right of the
Council to sit in judgment on the Governor. At the next meeting of the Board,
another communication from Nuncomar was produced. He requested that he might be
permitted to attend the Council, and that he might be heard in support of his
assertions. Another tempestuous debate took place. The Governor-General
maintained that the council-room was not a proper place for such an
investigation; that from persons who were heated by daily conflict with him he
could not expect the fairness of judges; and that he could not, without
betraying the dignity of his post, submit to be confronted with such a man as
Nuncomar. The majority, however, resolved to go into the charges. Hastings rose,
declared the sitting at an end, and left the room, followed by Barwell. The
other members kept their seats, voted themselves a council, put Clavering in the
chair, and ordered Nuncomar to be called in. Nuncomar not only adhered to the
original charges, but, after the fashion of the East, produced a large
supplement. He stated that Hastings had received a great sum for appointing
Rajah Goordas treasurer of the Nabob's household, and for committing the care of
his Highness's person to the Munny Begum. He put in a letter purporting to bear
the seal of the Munny Begum, for the purpose of establishing the truth of his
story. The seal, whether forged, as Hastings affirmed, or genuine, as we are
rather inclined to believe, proved nothing. Nuncomar, as everybody knows who
knows India, had only to tell the Munny Begum that such a letter would give
pleasure to the majority of the Council, in order to procure her attestation.
The majority, however, voted that the charge was made out; that Hastings had
corruptly received between thirty and forty thousand pounds; and that he ought
to be compelled to refund.
The general feeling among the English in Bengal was strongly in favor of the
Governor-General. In talents for business, in knowledge of the country, in
general courtesy of demeanor, he was decidedly superior to his persecutors. The
servants of the Company were naturally disposed to side with the most
distinguished member of their own body against a clerk from the War Office, who,
profoundly ignorant of the native language, and of the native character, took on
himself to regulate every department of the administration. Hastings, however,
in spite of the general sympathy of his countrymen, was in a most painful
situation. There was still an appeal to higher authority in England. If that
authority took part with his enemies, nothing was left to him but to throw up
his office. He accordingly placed his resignation in the hands of his agent in
London, Colonel Macleane. But Macleane was instructed not to produce the
resignation, unless it should be fully ascertained that the feeling at the India
House was adverse to the Governor-General.
The triumph of Nuncomar seemed to be complete. He held a daily levee, to which
his countrymen resorted in crowds, and to which on one occasion, the majority of
the Council condescended to repair. His house was an office for the purpose of
receiving charges against the Governor-General. It was said that, partly by
threats, and partly by wheedling, the villainous Brahmin had induced many of the
wealthiest men of the province to send in complaints. But he was playing a
perilous game. It was not safe to drive to despair a man of such resources and
of such determination as Hastings. Nuncomar, with all his acuteness, did not
understand the nature of the institutions under which he lived. He saw that he
had with him the majority of the body which made treaties, gave places, raised
taxes. The separation between political and judicial functions was a thing of
which he had no conception. It bad probably never occurred to him that there was
in Bengal an authority perfectly independent of the Council, an authority which
could protect one whom the Council wished to destroy and send to the gibbet one
whom the Council wished to protect. Yet such was the fact. The Supreme Court
was, within the sphere of its own duties, altogether independent of the
Government. Hastings, with his usual sagacity, had seen how much advantage he
might derive from possessing himself of this stronghold; and he had acted
accordingly. The judges, especially the Chief Justice, were hostile to the
majority of the Council. The time had now come for putting this formidable
machinery into action.
On a sudden, Calcutta was astounded by the news that Nuncomar had been taken up
on a charge of felony, committed and thrown into the common goal. The crime
imputed to him was that six years before he had forged a bond. The ostensible
prosecutor was a native. But it was then, and still is, the opinion of
everybody, idiots and biographers excepted, that Hastings was the real mover in
the business.
The rage of the majority rose to the highest point. They protested against the
proceedings of the Supreme Court, and sent several urgent messages to the
judges, demanding that Nuncomar should be admitted to bail. The Judges returned
haughty and resolute answers. All that the Council could do was to heap honors
and emoluments on the family of Nuncomar; and this they did. In the meantime the
assizes commenced; a true bill was found; and Nuncomar was brought before Sir
Elijah Impey and a jury composed of Englishmen. A great quantity of
contradictory swearing, and the necessity of having every word of the evidence
interpreted, protracted the trial to a most unusual length. At last a verdict of
guilty was returned, and the Chief Justice pronounced sentence of death on the
prisoner.
That Impey ought to have respited Nuncomar we hold to be perfectly clear.
Whether the whole proceeding was not illegal, is a question. But it is certain,
that whatever may have been, according to technical rules of construction, the
effect of the statute under which the trial took place, it was most unjust to
hang a Hindoo for forgery. The law which made forgery capital in England was
passed without the smallest reference to the state of society in India. It was
unknown to the natives of India. It had never been put in execution among them,
certainly not for want of delinquents. It was in the highest degree shocking to
all their notions. They were not accustomed to the distinction which many
circumstances, peculiar to our own state of society, have led us to make between
forgery and other kinds of cheating. The counterfeiting of a seal was, in their
estimation, a common act of swindling; nor had it ever crossed their minds that
it was to be punished as severely as gang-robbery or assassination. A just judge
would, beyond all doubt, have reserved the case for the consideration of the
sovereign. But Impey would not hear of mercy or delay.
The excitement among all classes was great. Francis and Francis's few English
adherents described the Governor-General and the Chief justice as the worst of
murderers. Clavering, it was said, swore that even at the foot of the gallows,
Nuncomar should be rescued. The bulk of the European society, though strongly
attached to the Governor-General, could not but feel compassion for a man who,
with all his crimes, had so long filled so large a space in their sight, who had
been great and powerful before the British empire in India began to exist, and
to whom, in the old times, governors and members of Council, then mere
commercial factors, had paid court for protection. The feeling of the Hindus was
infinitely stronger. They were, indeed, not a people to strike one blow for
their countryman. But his sentence filled them with sorrow and dismay. Tried
even by their low standard of morality, he was a bad man. But bad as he was, he
was the head of their race and religion, a Brahmin of the Brahmins. He had
inherited the purest and highest caste. He had practiced with the greatest
punctuality all those ceremonies to which the superstitious Bengalees ascribe
far more importance than to the correct discharge of the social duties. They
felt, therefore, as a devout Catholic in the dark ages would have felt, at
seeing a prelate of the highest dignity sent to the gallows by a secular
tribunal. According to their old national laws, a Brahmin could not be put to
death for any crime whatever. And the crime for which Nuncomar was about to die
was regarded by them in much the same light in which the selling of an unsound
horse, for a sound price, is regarded by a Yorkshire jockey.
The Mussulmans alone appear to have seen with exultation the fate of the
powerful Hindoo, who had attempted to rise by means of the ruin of Mahommed Reza
Khan. The Mahommedan historian of those times takes delight in aggravating the
charge. He assures us that in Nuncomar's house a casket was found containing
counterfeits of the seals of all the richest men of the province. We have never
fallen in with any other authority for this story, which in itself is by no
means improbable.
The day drew near; and Nuncomar prepared himself to die with that quiet
fortitude with which the Bengalee, so effeminately timid in personal conflict,
often encounters calamities for which there is no remedy. The sheriff, with the
humanity which is seldom wanting in an English gentleman, visited the prisoner
on the eve of the execution, and assured him that no indulgence, consistent with
the law, should be refused to him. Nuncomar expressed his gratitude with great
politeness and unaltered composure. Not a muscle of his face moved. No a sigh
broke from him. He put his finger to his forehead, and calmly said that fate
would have its way, and that there was no resisting the pleasure of God. He sent
his compliments to Francis, Clavering, and Monson, and charged them to protect
Rajah Goordas, who was about to become the head of the Brahmins of Bengal. The
sheriff withdrew, greatly agitated by what had passed, and Nuncomar sat
composedly down to write notes and examine accounts.
The next morning, before the sun was in his power, an immense concourse
assembled round the place where the gallows had been set up. Grief and horror
were on every face; yet to the last the multitude could hardly believe that the
English really purposed to take the life of the great Brahmin. At length the
mournful procession came through the crowd. Nuncomar sat up in his palanquin,
and looked round him with unaltered serenity. He had just parted from those who
were most nearly connected with him. Their cries and contortions had appalled
the European ministers of justice, but had not produced the smallest effect on
the iron stoicism of the prisoner. The only anxiety which he expressed was that
men of his own priestly caste might be in attendance to take charge of his
corpse. He again desired to be remembered to his friends in the Council, mounted
the scaffold with firmness, and gave the signal to the executioner. The moment
that the drop fell, a howl of sorrow and despair rose from the innumerable
spectators. Hundreds turned away their faces from the polluting sight, fled with
loud wailings towards the Hoogley, and plunged into its holy waters, as if to
purify themselves from the guilt of having looked on such a crime. These
feelings were not confined to Calcutta. The whole province was greatly excited;
and the population of Dacca, in particular, gave strong signs of grief and
dismay.
Of Impey's conduct it is impossible to speak too severely. We have already said
that, in our opinion, he acted unjustly in refusing to respite Nuncomar. No
rational man can doubt that he took this course in order to gratify the
Governor-General. If we had ever had any doubts on that point, they would have
been dispelled by a letter which Mr. Gleig has published. Hastings, three or
four years later, described Impey as the man "to whose support he was at one
time indebted for the safety of his fortune, honor, and reputation." These
strong words can refer only to the case of Nuncomar; and they must mean that
Impey hanged Nuncomar in order to support Hastings. It is, therefore, our
deliberate opinion that Impey, sitting as a judge, put a man unjustly to death
in order to serve a political purpose.
But we look on the conduct of Hastings in a somewhat different light. He was
struggling for fortune, honor, liberty, all that makes life valuable. He was
beset by rancorous and unprincipled enemies. From his colleagues he could expect
no justice. He cannot be blamed for wishing to crush his accusers. He was indeed
bound to use only legitimate means for that end. But it was not strange that he
should have thought any means legitimate which were pronounced legitimate by the
sages of the law, by men whose peculiar duty it was to deal justly between
adversaries, and whose education might be supposed to have peculiarly qualified
them for the discharge of that duty. Nobody demands from a party the unbending
equity of a judge. The reason that judges are appointed is, that even a good man
cannot be trusted to decide a cause in which he is himself concerned. Not a day
passes on which an honest prosecutor does not ask for what none but a dishonest
tribunal would grant. It is too much to expect that any man, when his dearest
interests are at stake, and his strongest passions excited, will, as against
himself, be more just than the sworn dispensers of justice. To take an analogous
case from the history of our own island; suppose that Lord Stafford, when in the
Tower on suspicion of being concerned in the Popish plot, had been apprised that
Titus Oates had done something which might, by a questionable construction, be
brought under the head of felony. Should we severely blame Lord Stafford, in the
supposed case, for causing a prosecution to be instituted, for furnishing funds,
for using all his influence to intercept the mercy of the Crown? We think not.
If a judge, indeed, from favor to the Catholic lords, were strain the law in
order to hang Oates, such a judge would richly deserve impeachment. But it does
not appear to us that the Catholic lord, by bringing the case before the judge
for decision, would materially overstep the limits of a just self-defense.
Previous |
Critical and Historical Essays, Volume I
| Next
Critical And Historical Essays, Volume I, Thomas Babbington Macaulay,
1843 |
|
Add/Correct a Link