A.D. 1827.

GEORGE CANNING PRIME MINISTER.

837

The Cabinet ministers were marshalled by the heralds in the nave of St. George's Chapel two hours before the arrival of the funeral procession. Mr. Canning caught a cold there which resulted in an illness from which he never really recovered.

On the 17th of February, lord Liverpool was seized with a fit of apoplexy. Under the circumstances of the premier's hopeless illness, the Catholic question was the chief barrier which opposed Canning's natural claim to be the head of the ministry. On the 5th of March sir Francis Burdett had moved that question. In the adjourned debate on the 6th, Mr. Secretary Peel and Mr. Secretary Canning were distinctly marshalled against each other; and each, without any direct personal allusions, sufficiently expressed his own views for the guidance of his followers. The king desired to reconcile these differences of opinion under a premiership which might allow the continuance of a system of compromise. He consulted the duke of Wellington, Mr. Peel, and Mr. Canning. These ministers had repeated conferences with each other, but no solution of the difficulty could be arrived at. Finally, on the 10th of April, his Majesty gave his commands to Mr. Canning to prepare, with as little delay as possible, a plan for the reconstruction of the administration. Six of Mr. Canning's late colleagues in the Cabinet resigned their offices before or on the 12ththe Lord Chancellor, the duke of Wellington, lord Westmoreland, lord Bathurst, lord Bexley, and Mr. Peel. Lord Bexley afterwards withdrew his resignation. Lord Melville retired from the office of First Lord of the Admiralty, and the duke of Clarence was appointed Lord-High-Admiral. The duke of Wellington, contrary to the desire of the king and his minister1 subsequently resigned, in addition to his seat in the Cabinet, his office of Commander-in-Chief. When the Houses met, after the Easter recess, on the 1st of May, Mr. Canning had completed the formation of his ministry. The House of Commons on that night presented an unusual spectacle. Sir Francis Burdett and Mr. Tierney sat immediately behind the minister. Mr. Brougham took his seat on the ministerial side; with other members who three weeks previously had sat on the benches of Opposition. In the House of Peers, lord Lyndhurst was on the woolsack. Three new peers took the oaths, viscount Goderich (late Mr. Robinson), lord Plunkett, and lord Tenterden. In the House of Commons, Mr. Canning, with his friend Huskisson by his side, was well able to hold his ground against "that species of orators called the yelpers," who were perpetually pestering the minister "to give some explanation of the circumstances which led to the dissolution of the late and the formation of the present administration." The opposition in the House of Peers was more serious. The impotent rage of the duke of Newcastle carried its own antidote. But Mr. Canning was deeply wounded at being attacked by lord Grey "with haughty and contemptuous violence." Lord Holland stood up boldly to defend himself and his friends from the charge of having given an unworthy support to the minister thus assailed. The incessant exhibition of personal hostility to Mr. Canning rendered it impossible for the minister either to make a triumphant display of his oratorical power, or to carry through any measure

Guizot-"Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel," p. 31.

of great public importance. He spoke for the last time on the 18th of June, on the subject of the Corn-trade. The Session was closed on the 2nd of July. On the 31st of July Mr. Canning was attacked with internal inflammation, which terminated in his death on the 8th of August. He was buried in Westminster Abbey on the 16th in the most private manner. But the universal display of sorrow told more than any funereal pomp that a great man had departed.

The settlement of a treaty between Great Britain, France, and Russia, on the subject of the affairs of Greece, was the latest, as it was amongst the most important, of the official acts of Mr. Canning. That treaty was signed on the 7th of July, 1827. The position of Greece since 1821 was such as to arouse the deepest sympathies of every Englishman who knew anything of her ancient story. The Greeks in that year, seizing the opportunity of a war between the sultan and Ali Pasha, rose in revolt. For six years a cruel and devastating war had gone on, in which the Greeks, at first successful, had more and more quailed before the greater force which the Porte was able at last to bring against them, by employing the disciplined troops of the pasha of Egypt. In September, 1826, the Divan having obstinately refused to enter into negotiations with those over whom they considered themselves the absolute masters, the British Government proposed to Russia that the Porte should be apprised that the result of this obstinacy would be the recognition of the independence of Greece. Upon the conclusion of the treaty of July, 1827, it was agreed to present a joint declaration to the Divan stating that as it was no longer possible to admit that the fate of Greece concerned exclusively the Ottoman Porte, the three contracting Powers offered their mediation between the Sublime Porte and the Greeks to put an end to the war, and to settle by amicable negotiation the relations which ought for the future to exist between them. If the Ottoman Porte returned no answer in a mouth, or if an evasive answer were given, the three Powers would themselves interfere to establish an armistice. In all the complicated negotiations for the pacification of Greece, Mr. Canning had been most anxious to avoid any course of action which would lead to direct hostilities, and especially to avert the possible danger of a policy of absolute neutrality on the part of Great Britain, which might have placed the Turkish empire at the feet of Russia.

CHAPTER LXII.

Ar the beginning of 1807 India was at peace. On the death of the marquess Cornwallis, the powers of the Governor-General were exercised by sir George Barlow, until he was recalled by the Grenville administration, in direct opposition to the Board of Directors. The debates in Parliament on this subject were continued and violent. The conflict was finally settled by the appointment of lord Minto. The tranquillity of lord Minto's government was after a while seriously disturbed by war with the Rajah of Travancore, which originated in a dispute between his Dewan

A.D. 1807-1827.

THE TRADE TO INDIA OPENED.

839

or chief minister, and the British resident. The Rajah's troops were beaten in the field during 1808, and the lines of Travancore being stormed at the beginning of 1809, and other forts captured, relations of amity between the Company and the Rajah were restored. A more serious danger arose out of a mutiny amongst the officers of the Madras army, who had long been stirred up to discontent on account of the various and contradictory regulations existing in the several Presidencies. Some of the insubordinate officers were suspended by an order of the 1st of May, and then open mutiny burst out at Hyderabad, Masulipatam, Seringapatam, and other places. On one occasion only was blood shed in this extraordinary revolt. The misguided men gradually returned to habits of obedience. In September lord Minto published an amnesty, with the exception of eighteen officers, nearly all of whom chose to resign rather than to abide the judgment of a court-martial. During this alarming period the king's troops had manifested the most entire obedience to the orders of the Governor-General.

During the administration of lord Minto a number of successful operations were undertaken in the Eastern Archipelago, which, in 1810, gave us possession of Amboyna and the Banda isles, of the island of Bourbon, and of the Mauritius. The most important of these conquests was the rich island of Java, which, after a severe battle with the Dutch troops near the capital, capitulated in 1810. Java passed out of our hands at the peace. The usual term of a Governor-General's residence being completed, lord Minto resigned in 1813, and proceeded to England. In March, 1813, the House of Commons resolved itself into a Committee to consider the affairs of the East India Company. The debates in both Houses on the Resolutions proposed occupied four months of the session. A Bill was finally passed by which the trade to India was thrown open, on certain conditions; the territorial and commercial branches of the Company's affairs were separated, and the king was empowered to create a bishop of India, and three archdeacons, to be paid by the Company.

Lord Minto was succeeded as Governor-General by the earl of Moira, afterwards marquess of Hastings, who took possession of the government on the 4th of October, 1813. The Gorkhas,— -so called from that portion of Nepaul which surrounded Gorkha, the capital,-at this period were subjecting all the smaller states to their dominion, and were able to maintain an army of twelve thousand disciplined men, who were clothed and accoutred like the British sepóys. In 1814 they exhibited their ill-will against the Company's troops by attacking two police-stations in the districts of Goruckpoor and Sarun, and by massacreing all the troops in the garrisons there. The first operations of the British troops were unsuccessful; but in 1815 Sir David Ochterlony was enabled to dislodge the Gorkhas from their hill-forts, and to compel their commander, Ameer Singh, to capitulate. A treaty of peace was ratified, and the war concluded at the beginning of 1816. Some portions of territory were ceded to the Company; but for the most part the chiefs who had been expelled by the conquering Gorkhas were restored to their ancient possessions.

The Governor-General, at the conclusion of the peace with Nepaul, applied to the authorities at home for permission to carry on the war with

the Pindarees upon a great scale. The province of Malwa was the chief seat of this body of freebooters, who lived in separate societies of one or two hundred, governed each by its chief, but were always ready to combine under one supreme chief for the purposes of their marauding expeditions. They seized the opportunity of our troops being engaged in the Nepaulese war, not only to plunder and devastate the territories of our allies, but within the Company's frontiers to plunder more than three hundred villages and to put to death or torture more than four thousand individuals. The Governor-General had obtained certain information that the Pindarees were secretly supported by a confederacy of Mahratta potentates. At the end of September, 1817, orders were issued for a simultaneous movement of the army of Bengal under the command of the Governor-General, of the army of the Deccan under the command of sir Thomas Hislop, and of various corps from different stations, each marching to points from which the Pindarees could be surrounded, and at the same time their Mahratta and other supporters prevented from uniting their forces. The war was terminated in the spring of 1818, with the entire destruction or dispersion of these terrible marauders. The Mahratta confederacy was also utterly broken up by the successes of the British. The Rajah of Nagpore, after a battle of eighteen hours, was defeated, and his town of Nagpore taken on the 26th of November. Holkar was beaten on the 21st of December at the battle of Meehud poor, and peace was concluded with him on the 6th of January, 1819. The Peishwa of the Mahrattas surrendered to the English in the following June, agreeing to abdicate his throne, and become a pensioner of the East India Company. During the war with the Pindarees, whilst the British army was encamped in low ground, on the banks of a tributary of the Jumna, the Indian cholera morbus broke out in the camp, and destroyed in little more than a week one-tenth of the number there crowded together.

During the period of the administration of the marquess of Hastings Ceylon was entirely subjected to the British dominion. In 1796 the maritime provinces had been wrested from the Dutch by a British armament. The interior, known as the kingdom of Kandy, was governed by native princes. In 1815 the king of Kandy had rendered himself so ob noxious to his subjects by a series of atrocities that his deposition took place, and the British were invited by Kandian chiefs to take possession of his dominions. The British administration of Ceylon was not connected with that of the East India Company; it was a distinct possession of the Crown, having been formally ceded by the Treaty of Amiens. the small island of Singapore, in 1819, sir Thomas Raffles established a factory, on the south shore, and in 1824, a cession in full sovereignty of this and the neighbouring islands was obtained by purchase from a person who claimed to be king of Jahore, and was afterwards raised to that throne. Malacca was ceded to the British in 1824 by treaty with the government of the Netherlands.

On

In March, 1823, lord Amherst embarked for India as Governor-General. Within six or seven months of his arrival he found himself engaged in war with the Birman empire. Before the middle of the eighteenth century the name of Birman signified a great warlike race that had founded various

A.D. 1807-1827.

THE BIRMESE WAR.

841

kingdoms, amongst which were Siam, Pegu, Ava, and Aracan. Ava had been conquered by the Peguers when, in 1753, a man of humble origin but of great ability, raised a small force, which, constantly increasing, expelled the conquerors and placed Alompra on the Birman throne. For nearly seventy years the British from the Ganges, and the Birmese from the Irawaddi, pushed their conquests, whether by arms or negotiation, till they met. Their inevitable rivalry soon led to hostilities. In March, 1824, the Birmese seized an island on which we had established a small military post, and when the Governor-General mildly complained to the king of Ava of this outrage, a force came down from Ava, "threatening to invade our territory from one end of the frontier to the other, and to reannex the province of Bengal to the dominions of its rightful owner, the Lord of the White Elephant."

At the beginning of April the Bengal army embarked for Rangoon, the chief seaport of the Birman dominions. This important place was taken possession of almost without striking a blow. Sir Archibald Campbell, who occupied Rangoon, felt the immediate necessity of fortifying it against the probable attack of a bold and persevering enemy. An enormous pagoda, more than three hundred feet high, became a citadel, garrisoned by a battalion of European troops, and the smaller Buddhist temples assumed the character of fortresses. During June and July the Birmese made repeated attacks upon the British positions, but were as constantly repelled. On the night of the 30th of August, a body of troops called Invulnerables advanced to the northern gateway. A terrible cannonade was opened upon these dense masses, and they fled at once to the neighbouring jungle. The Birmese were more successful in their offensive operations in Bengal. Under the command of an officer called Maha Bandoola, the Aracan army advanced to Ramoo, and completely routed a detachment of native infantry. They, however, did not advance to Calcutta. The British had taken some important places of the Birman territory, and Maha Bandoola was recalled by the Lord of the White Elephant for the defence of his Golden Empire. In December Maha Bandoola brought sixty thousand fighting men to make one overwhelming attack upon Rangoon. For seven days there was severe fighting. The Birmese troops were repeatedly driven from their stockades, and at last, when they advanced for a grand attack on the great pagoda, they were driven back into their entrenchments, and after severe fighting were chased into the jungle.

In February, 1825, sir Archibald Campbell began to move up the Irawaddi into the interior of the Birman empire. On the 25th of March, he undertook the siege of Donoopew. For a week there had been an incessant fire from our mortars and rockets, and the breaching batteries were about to be opened, when the chiefs and all the Birmese army fled, Maha Bandoola having been killed by one of our shells. By the possession of Donoopew the navigation of the Irawaddi became wholly under our command. The army continued to advance, supported by a flotilla on the rivers. In the naval assistance thus rendered, steam was for the first time introduced into war. Prome was occupied at the end of April. In the middle of November and beginning of December there were two great