even as much as our own is habituated, to pay a blind and undistinguishing CHAP. VI. respect to the character and acts of judges; the subservience of the courts of law 1781. is an instrument of power, of portentous magnitude. Court of Judicature. The consequence of the discussion which these transactions underwent, and of An act to regulate anew the sensations which they produced in the nation, was an act of parliament to the Supreme regulate anew the Supreme Court of Judicature, and deprive it of the powers which had been found destructive: And, upon a change of ministry, an address to the King was voted by the House of Commons, on the 3d of May, 1782, for the recall of Sir Elijah Impey, to answer to the charge of having "accepted an Chief Justice office not agreeable to the true intent and meaning of the act 13 Geo. III."* recalled. Soon after his appointment to the office of Judge of Sudder Duannee Adaulut, Judicatorial thirteen articles of regulations for the practice of that Court and of the subor- regulations. dinate tribunals were recommended by the Judge, approved by the government, and adopted. With these were incorporated various additions and amendments, which were afterwards published in a revised code, comprising ninety-five articles. The number of provincial Duannee Adauluts was, in April, 1781, increased from six to eighteen, in consequence of the inconvenience experienced from the extent of their jurisdiction. As the establishment of the police magistrates, called foujdars and tannadars, Police ditto. introduced in 1774, followed the example of so many of the contrivances adopted in the government of India; that is, did not answer the end for which it was designed, the judges of Duannee Adaulut were vested with power of apprehending depredators and delinquents, within the bounds of their jurisdiction, but not of trying or punishing them; a power which was still reserved to the Nizamut Adauluts, acting in the name of the Nabob. The Governor-General and Council also reserved a power of authorizing, in cases in which they might deem it expedient, the Zemindars to exercise such part of the police jurisdiction as they had formerly exercised under the Mogul administration. And in order to afford the government some oversight and control over the penal jurisdiction of the * For these important proceedings, the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons, to which the petitions respecting the administration of justice in Bengal were referred; and the First Report of the Select Committee of 1781, with the ample documents contained in their voluminous appendixes, have been laboriously consulted. See also The Speech of Sir Elijah Impey delivered at the bar of the House of Commons on the 4th day of February, 1788, with the documents printed in the Appendix; though this defence refers almost solely to the conduct of the Chief Justice in the trial and execution of Nuncomar. See also Colebrooke's Supplement, p. 14, 23, 128; and the Fifth Report from the Select Committee on India affairs, in 1810, p. 8 and 9. 1781. BOOK V. country, a new office was established at the Presidency, under the immediate superintendence of the Governor-General. To this office, reports of proceedings, with lists of commitments and convictions, were to be transmitted every month; and an officer, under the Governor-General, with the title of Remembrancer of the Criminal Courts, was appointed for the transaction of its affairs. In November, 1782, in consequence of commands from the Court of Directors, the jurisdiction of the Sudder Duannee Adaulut was resumed by the GovernorGeneral and Council.* A new plan for collecting Provincial Upon these changes, in the judicial, followed close another change, in the rethe revenue; venue system. In 1773 the plan was adopted of performing the collection of the Councils abo- revenues by means of provincial Councils; but under the declared intention of its lished; and Board of Rebeing only temporary, and preparatory to another plan; namely, that of a Board venue set up. of Revenue at the Presidency, by whom, with local officers, the whole business of realizing the revenue might be performed. Afterwards, when disputes with Mr. Francis, and other opposing members of the Council, arose, Mr. Hastings had maintained, that the expedient of provincial Councils was the most excellent which it was possible for him to devise. On the 20th of February, 1781, however, a very short time after the departure of Mr. Francis, he recurred to the plan which was projected in 1773; and decreed as follows, That a Committee of Revenue should be established at the Presidency, consisting of four covenanted servants of the Company; that the provincial Councils should be abolished, and all the powers with which they were vested transferred to the Committee; that the Committee should transact, with full authority, all the current business of revenue, and lay a monthly report of their proceedings before the Council; that the majority of votes, in the Committee, should determine all those points on which there should be a difference of opinion; that the record, however, of each dissentient opinion was not expected; that, even upon a reference to the Council, the execution of what the majority had determined should not be staid, unless to the majority themselves the suspension appeared to be requisite; and that a commission of two per cent. on all sums paid monthly into the treasury at Calcutta, and one per cent. on all sums paid monthly into the treasuries which remained under charge of the collectors, should be granted as the remuneration, according to certain proportions, of the members and their principal assistants. Against this arrangement it was afterwards urged, That it was an addition to * Fifth Report of the Select Committee in 1810; Second Report of the Select Committee in 1781. those incessant changes, which were attended with great trouble, uncertainty, CHAP. VI. and vexation to the people: That it was a wanton innovation, if the praises bestowed by Mr. Hastings on the provincial Councils were deserved: That it divested the Supreme Council of that power over the business of revenue, with which they solely were entrusted by the legislature, to lodge it in the hands of Mr. Hastings; as the members of the Committee were under his appointment, and the Council were deprived of the means of forming an accurate judgement on all disputed points; hearing the reasons of the majority alone, while those of the minority were suppressed. To these objections Mr. Hastings replied, that the inconveniences of change were no argument against any measure, provided the advantages of the measure surpassed them; that he was not bound by his declarations respecting the fitness of the provincial Councils, when the factious disputes which divided them, and the decline of the revenues, proved that they were ill adapted to their purpose; that the business of the revenue was necessarily transferred from the Supreme Council, because the time of the Council was inadequate to its demands; that the Committee of Revenue were not vested with the powers of the Council, in any other sense than the provincial Councils, or any other delegates; but, on the contrary, acted under its immediate control. It was entrusted to the Committee to form a plan for the future assessment and collection of the revenues. And the following are the expedients of which they made choice: To form an estimate of the abilities of the several districts, from antecedent accounts, without recurring to local inspection and research : To let the revenues, without intermediate agents, to the Zemindars, where the Zemindary was of considerable extent: And, that they might save government the trouble of detail, in those places where the revenues were in the hands of a number of petty renters, to let them all together, upon annual contracts.* *The official documents are found in the Appendix, Sixth Report of the Select Committee, 1782; and in the papers printed for the House of Commons, on the question of the impeachment. See too the Fifteenth article of Charge against Hastings, and the answer. 1781. Governor vinces. 1 CHAP. VII. Journey of the Governor-General to the Upper Provinces-History of the Company's Connexions with the Rajah of Benares-Requisitions upon the Rajah-Resolution to relieve the Company's Necessities by forcible Exaction on the Rajah-The Governor-General arrives at Benares-The Rajah put under Arrest-A tumultuous Assemblage of the People-An Affray between them and the Soldiers-The Rajah escapes-War made upon him, and the Country subdued-Condemnation of Mr. Hastings by the Directors -Double Negotiation with the Mahrattas of Poonah-Treaty of Peace. BOOK V. It was immediately subsequent to these great changes in the financial and judiciary departments of the government, that the celebrated journey of the Journey of the Governor-General to the Upper Provinces took place. Important as was the General to the business, which at that time pressed upon the attention of the government, when Upper Prowar raged in the Carnatic, when the contest with the Mahrattas was carried on in two places at once, and when the Supreme Council was so greatly reduced in numbers that, upon the departure of the Governor-General, one member alone, Mr. Wheler, was left to conduct the machine of government, it was to be concluded, that matters of great concernment had withdrawn the GovernorGeneral from the principal scene of intelligence, of deliberation, and of action. The transactions which he had in view were chiefly those proceedings which he meditated with regard to the Rajah of Benares, and the Nabob of Oude. The government was distressed for money, and the intention was avowed of making those tributary Princes subservient to its supply. The Governor-General departed from Calcutta on the 7th of July, 1781, and arrived at Benares on the 14th of August. To understand the events which ensued, it is necessary to trace, from its origin, the connexion which subsisted between the English and the Rajah. Its objects. History of the Company's connexion After the shock which the empire of the Great Mogul sustained by the invasion of Nadir Shah, when the subahdars and other governors, freed from the with the Rajah restraint of a powerful master, added to the territory, placed under their command, as much as they were able of the adjacent country, the city and district of Benares were reduced under subjection to the Nabob of Oude. This city, of Benares. 1781. which was the principal seat of Brahmenical religion and learning, and to the CHAP. VII. native inhabitants an object of prodigious veneration and resort, appears, during the previous period of Mahomedan sway, to have remained under the immediate government of an Hindu. Whether, till the time at which it became an appanage to the Subah of Oude, it had ever been governed through the medium of any of the neighbouring viceroys, or had always paid its revenue immediately to the imperial treasury, does not certainly appear. With the exception of coining money, in his own name; a prerogative of majesty, which, as long as the throne retained its vigour, was not enfeebled by communication; and that of the administration of criminal justice, which the Nabob had withdrawn, the Rajah of Benares had always, it is probable, enjoyed and exercised all the powers of government, within his own dominions. In 1764, when the war broke out between the English and the Subahdar of Oude, Bulwant Sing was Rajah of Benares, and, excepting the payment of an annual tribute, was almost independent of that grasping chief, who meditated the reduction of Benares to the same species of dominion which he exercised over the province of Oude. The Rajah would gladly have seen the authority of the English substituted in Oude to that of the Vizir, whom he had so much occasion to dread. He offered to assist them with his forces; and, to anticipate all jealousy, from the idea of his aiming at independence, expressed his willingness to hold the country, subject to the same obligations under them, as it had sustained in the case of the Nabob; and so highly important was the service which he rendered to the Company, that the Directors expressed their sense of it in the strongest terms. When peace was concluded, the Rajah was secured from the effects of the Nabob's resentment and revenge, by an express article in the treaty; upon which the English insisted, and the guarantee of which they solemnly undertook. Upon the death of Bulwant Sing, in the year 1770, the disposition of the Vizir to dispossess the family, and take the province into his own hands, was strongly displayed, but the English again interfered, and compelled the Vizir to confirm the succession to Cheyte Sing, the son of the late Rajah, and his posterity for ever, on the same terms, excepting a small rise in the annual payment, as those on which the country had been held by his father. In the year 1773, when Mr. Hastings paid his first visit to the Nabob of Oude, the preceding agreement was renewed and confirmed. "The Nabob," said Mr. Hastings, "pressed me, in very earnest terms, for my consent, that he should dispossess the Rajah of * In their Bengal Letter, 26th May, 1768. |