66

1785.

that he was the person to whom Britain owed the rise of her power in India; CHAP. I. that his attachment and unsullied honour to the English were unparalleled. I then dwelt upon his personal merits, as a statesman and a gentleman; and showed, that though he had assurances of protection, under the sovereign hand, he was treated with indignity, and even tyranny.” Having represented," continues the author, "the Nabob's distress, and the oppressions under which he laboured, in the most cautious manner to his Grace, I availed myself of the disputes which subsisted, or were rather commencing, between his Grace, as First Lord of the Treasury, and the India Directors, to enforce the propriety of supporting the Nabob." Another of the topics which he says he always laboured was, "that the firm support of his Highness was the best restraint which government had upon the usurpations of the servants of a certain Company." The memorialist also desires the Nabob to recollect, whether he was not the inventor of the plea, by which the Nabob claimed to be a party to the treaty of Paris; that is, to rank himself with the princes of Europe, as a member of their general system; and to make the King of France an arbiter between him and the English. Beside the general project of relieving the Nabob from oppression, that is, from the necessity of paying his debts, and of yielding any thing from the revenues of the country towards its defence, the memorialist claims the merit of having exerted himself in favour of two other favourite designs of the Nabob; that of usurping the seat of the Subah of Deccan, and that of disinheriting his elder in favour of his second son. Beside the arguments which

the memorialist employed upon the minister, and the publications by which he boasts of having influenced the public mind, he recurred to other instruments of persuasion. He offered presents to the minister, but they were rejected; and then to the minister's secretary, but they were rejected again. His next offer, but under the necessary portion of disguise, was that of a present to the nation; a sum of seventy lacs, or even more, to be given to the minister, on loan for the public service, at an interest of two per cent.

As the memorialist in these transactions appeared distinctly to have lent or sold himself to the Nabob, to act in hostility to the Company, it was decided in the Council, by a majority of nine to two, that Mr. Macpherson should be dismissed from the service. Four of the members, not satisfied with a silent acquiescence in the reasons of the President, add, that "a man of the intriguing disposition which that paper shows Mr. Macpherson to be, is, we think, very unfit to be employed as a servant of the Company; more especially as we believe Mr. Macpherson has been concerned in the intrigues, which the greater part of

BOOK VI. the Board must be sensible have lately been carried on at the Nabob's Durbar, to the detriment of the Company's service, and which may have impeded the execution of their late orders."

1785.

As the Board regarded the evidence against Mr. Macpherson as conclusive, they held it unnecessary to call upon him for a defence. To the Directors, the offence, when it came before them, must have appeared of a very trivial sort. About the restoration of Mr. Macpherson they seem not to have hesitated. Their only anxiety was to restore him, without submission to the condition, namely, the votes of three-fourths of the Directors, and three-fourths of the Proprietors, prescribed by the act. The opinion obtained from the Company's council was, that though his dismission, pronounced without receiving his defence, was informal, he could not, without submission to the clause of the act, be restored. The counsel added, " And it is worth considering, if Mr. Macpherson should be restored, whether he is a proper person to be continued in the Company's service: He has, in my opinion, too much connexion with the Nabob of Arcot; and when the Company's interest and Nabob's are opposite, (as they will often happen), they will greatly disturb a man of honour and integrity." As this opinion appears not to have concorded with the wishes of the leading portion of the Directors, they made an experiment whether a more favourable opinion could not be obtained from another quarter. They consulted the Solicitor-General, Wedderburne, who had sufficient power over technical language to satisfy them completely. He pronounced the dismission of Mr. Macpherson not a dismission; and by consequence, the clause of the act, which regarded dismission, had in this case no application. Mr. Macpherson was immediately restored. In announcing, however, this decree to the Governor and Council of Madras, the letter of the Court of Directors has the following words; "But, as his behaviour was disrespectful to your Board, and, in other particulars, very reprehensible, we direct that you give him a severe reprimand, and acquaint him that a like conduct will meet with a severer punishment." From the humiliation, however, of such a reprimand, and such a menace, the Court of Directors, who commanded them, afforded him effectual protection. Though: restored to his rank and emoluments in the service, he was allowed to remain in England, till January, 1781, when he was chosen to fill the high office, vacant by the resignation of Mr. Barwell, in the Supreme Council of Bengal. This appointment excited the attention of the Select Committee of the House of Commons, who took it under examination, and deemed it of sufficient importance to make it the subject of their third report. The conduct of Mr. Mac

1785.

pherson, who undertook the office of a secret enemy of the Company, and be- CHAP. I. came the willing and mercenary instrument of designs levelled against his country; the conduct of the Court of Directors in shielding such a man from the punishment awarded for his offence, nay, distinguishing him, as if he had been a model of excellence, by a most unusual act of reward; lifting him up from a low rank in the service, and placing him all at once in nearly the highest and most important office which they had to bestow, the Select Committee condemned, in language of the greatest severity. The design of the Nabob to exempt himself from all dependance upon the Company, the Committee represented as early formed, systematically pursued, and pregnant with danger. He endeavoured to negotiate a treaty of neutrality with the French, which would have secured that nation at Pondicherry. He carried on, to the perpetual disturbance of the Company's government, a perpetual system of intrigue, in pursuance of his plan. Of Mr. Macpherson's construction of the article in the treaty of Paris respecting the guarantee of his independence by France, he was eager to take advantage, and to interpose that nation between himself and the English. By means of such flattering delusions," say the Committee, "the ambition of the Nabob Mahomed Ali had been, before this invention, as well as ever since, stimulated to desperate designs and enterprises; which have disturbed the peace of India, shaken the lawful government of the Company at Madras, wasted his own revenues, and at length brought the power of Great Britain in that part of the world to the verge of ruin."

66

A copy of this report was by the Directors sent out to Bengal, where Mr. Macpherson was then performing so important a part in the government of India. It was a call upon him for a defence of his own conduct and of theirs. The apology was written, under date the 30th of March, 1783. It consisted of the following particulars; First, an assertion, that the transactions in which he had been engaged for the Nabob of Arcot, were made fully known to the Company's Governor of Madras, at the time when he entered into the Company's service, and that he had never presented any memorial of those transactions to the Nabob, but what had that Governor's approbation; Secondly, of a display of the meritorious proceedings of the Supreme Government in Bengal, from the time when he became a member of it.*

Upon the first part of this apology, it is obvious to remark, that it consisted

* For these facts, see the Third Report of the Select Committee formed in 1781; and Mr. Macpherson's Letter to the Court of Directors, dated Calcutta, 30th of March, 1783, printed by order of the House of Commons, among the papers laid before them in 1787.

1785.

BOOK VI. entirely of his own affirmation of what passed between himself and a man that was dead. Besides, if it was true, it only proved that a certain governor sanctioned a certain conduct; not that such conduct was innocent. The secret concurrence of a governor, if in any thing wrong, was a collusion between two individuals, not the sanction of government. Upon the second part, an observation equally conclusive was, that the plea was foreign to the charge; for surely the acts of the Supreme Council, whether excellent or the reverse, during the time in which Mr. Macpherson had possessed a seat at the Board, were no proof that nearly twenty years before he had not committed an act, which ought to have excluded him from the service.

State of the
Company's

government.

As Mr. Hastings remained in India till the passing of Mr. Pitt's bill left no longer any doubt of his recall, Mr. Macpherson had time to rise to seniority in the Council; and by virtue of his station, occupied, when left vacant, the Governor-General's chair.

66

The state of the revenues; the affairs of Oude; and the proceedings of Scindia, the great Mahratta chief, occupied first the attention of the new administration. The state, in which Mr. Macpherson received the government, he represents as far from happy and prosperous. In a statement, bearing date the 4th of March, 1785, "The public distress," he says, was never so pressing as in this moment. The season of the heavy collections is over; the demands of Madras and Bombay are most pressing; and our arrears to the army are upwards of fifty lacs." * To the Court of Directors, when rendering an account of his government upon the intimation of his recall, he represents himself, as having been called upon "to act as their Governor-General, at a season of peculiar difficulty, when the close of a ruinous war, and the relaxed habits of their service, had left all their armies in arrear, and their presidencies in disorder."† The loose language, in which the Indian Governors indulge, makes it impossible

* Letter to Major Palmer, printed among extracts from papers in No. 2, vol. vii. presented to the House of Commons on the 13th of March, 1786.

+ Copy of a letter to the Court of Directors, dated 10th August, 1786, printed by order of the House of Commons.-The Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1810, in their

Third Report, p. 370, say, "The effects of the war which ended in the year 1783 were particularly prejudicial to the financial system of India. The revenues had been absorbed, the pay and allowances of both the civil and military branches of the service were greatly in arrear; the credit of the Company was extremely depressed: and, added to all, the whole system had fallen into such irregularity and confusion, that the real state of affairs could not be ascertained till the conclusion of the year 1785-6." Such is the state, in which India was left, by the administration of Mr. Hastings.

to know very exactly what Mr. Macpherson indicated, by the term "relaxed CHAP. I. habits" of the service; undoubtedly, however, he meant bad government; since 1785. he described them as among the causes of some of the worst effects,-armies all in arrear—and presidencies all in disorder.

Oude.

The Governor-General and Council stood pledged to Mr. Hastings for the Nabob of maintenance of his new system for the management of Oude. To reduce, however, the drain upon the Nabob's treasury produced by allowances and gratuities to the Company's servants, a rule was introduced, that every thing of this nature should appear upon the face of his accounts, be recorded by the Council, and transmitted for the inspection of the Court of Directors. A body of troops had been assigned by the Nabob to Mr. Hastings, as a body guard, during his residence in Oude; and to these troops had been appointed British officers at the Nabob's expense. This too was a burthen upon the Nabob which the GovernorGeneral deemed it improper any longer to impose. The expense, however, of Major Palmer, the private agent of Mr. Hastings, left at the seat of the Nabob when the ostensible resident was withdrawn, he was induced " from motives (he says) of delicacy, to the late Governor-General, and his arrangements in the upper provinces," not immediately to`remove; though the expense was enormous,* and the agent employed for no other function than to transmit to the Presidency the letters of the Vizir and present those addressed to him by the GovernorGeneral. The Futty-gur detachment, from the changes which had taken place on the frontiers of Oude, it was also, for the present, deemed unsafe to withdraw. But the Governor-General declared his resolution of confining the military burthen imposed upon the Vizir to the smallest amount, consistent with the security of his dominions; and for this he conceived that one complete brigade, in constant readiness, and punctually paid, would suffice. †

The proceedings of Scindia were already an object of great jealousy, if not of Scindia. dread. In 1781, Mr. Hastings, apparently engrossed by one object, the accomplishment of peace with Scindia, and through his medium with the government at Poonah, overlooked or misunderstood the dangers which were involved in the aggrandisement of the Mahratta chief, and expressly instructed the English ambassador to throw no obstacles in the way of the designs which he entertained against the remaining territories of the Mogul. Toward the end of the year 1782,

* In all 112,950. of which 22,800l. was in salary to Major Palmer alone. The expense of the residency, under Mr. Bristow, which Mr. Hastings had represented as frightfully enormous, amounted to 64,2021. See Burke's Charges, No. 16, sect. 89.

† See the letter to Major Palmer, quoted in the preceding page.