6

CORRECTION OF ABUSES.

[CHAP. Court of Directors nominated their friends and relatives to the most lucrative appointments in India, and the connection thus established between the patrons in Leadenhall-street, and the nominees in India, was too often fatal to the authority of the Governor-General. Lord Cornwallis was determined to put an end to this practice, but his efforts were not successful until he threatened, if it was persisted in, to resign the government, "that he might preserve his own character, and avoid witnessing the ruin of the national interests."

Instances of abuse, 1786.

Lord Cornwallis found the system of official depredation in full bloom. The sub-treasurer was, as he remarked, playing with the deposits; that is, lending out lacs upon lacs of the public money, at twelve per cent. interest. The Commander-in-Chief had given two of his favourites the profitable privilege of raising two regiments, which Lord Cornwallis ordered to be disbanded soon after his arrival. The two commandants immediately demanded compensation, but after the most diligent inquiry, it could not be discovered that either of the regiments had ever existed, except on the paymaster's books. The collectors of the revenue were still engaged in trade, in the name of some friend or relative, and as they were also judges and magistrates, and possessed of irresistible influence in their districts, they were enabled to amass enormous fortunes; and one of them did not hesitate to admit, that his emoluments exceeded his salary more than twenty fold. The raja of Benares is described by Lord Cornwallis as a fool, and his servants as knaves, and the Resident, supreme in power, monopolized the commerce of the province, and realized four lacs a year, though his regular allowance did not exceed 1,000 rupees a month. It was the old process, so well understood in the east, of turning power into money, which now gave fortunes to a new race of conquerors, as it had enriched the Afghan, the Tartar, the Mogul, and the Abysinian conquerors, who preceded them. There was, however, this material difference

XVI.]

AUGMENTATION OF SALARIES.

7

in the two cases; the Asiatic invader settled in the country, and his acquisitions were expended in it, while the European transported his gains to his own country, and was seen no more. The fortunes thus imported into England will not, it is true, bear any comparison with those which have been subsequently realized in manufactures and railroads. With one exception, there were not a dozen of the Company's servants, from first to last, who took home so large a sum as forty lacs of rupees, but, for the time, their wealth was considered prodigious; and serious apprehensions were entertained by many in England, that eastern gold would undermine its constitution. But it is the peculiar merit of the British administration in India, that it has succeeded in surmounting these abuses, under which previous dynasties had perished, and that, instead of becoming more corrupt with the progress of time, it has worked itself pure, and now presents a model of official integrity, which has, perhaps, no parallel in the world.

The salaries of the public

servants

augmented, 1788.

To the task of reform Lord Cornwallis applied himself with the greatest assiduity. He hunted out frauds in every department, and abolished jobbing agencies, and contracts and sinecures. His greatest difficulty arose from the importunity of men of power and influence in England who had been in the habit of quartering their friends and kindred, and even their victims at the gambling-table, on the revenues of India. But the Governor-General was inexorable, and he had the courage to decline the recommendations of the Prince of Wales himself, afterwards George the Fourth, who, as he remarked, "was always pressing some infamous and unjustifiable job on him." These reforms, however, were not consummated till he had convinced the Court of Directors of the truth, which Clive and Hastings had in vain pressed on them, that "it was not good economy to put men into places of the greatest confidence, where they have it in their power to make their fortunes in a few months, without giving them

8

ARRANGEMENT WITH OUDE.

[CHAP. adequate salaries." The Court parted with the traditionary policy of two centuries with great reluctance; but Lord Cornwallis at length succeeded in "annexing liberal salaries to these offices, and in giving gentlemen a prospect of acquiring, by economy, a moderate fortune from the savings of their allowances."

Arrangement with Oude. 1786.

On the arrival of Lord Cornwallis, the Vizier hastened to send his minister to Calcutta, to renew the request to be relieved from the expense of the British troops stationed in his dominions. But the rapid encroachments of Sindia in Hindostan, and the growing power of the Sikhs, convinced the Governor-General that the brigade could not be withdrawn from Futtygur without great risk. He consented, however, to reduce the demand on the treasury of Lucknow for their support, from seventy-four to fifty lacs of rupees a year, provided it was paid with punctuality. The higher sum had never been realised, and the Company lost nothing by the arrangement, while the defence of Oude from foreign invasion, was provided for at a charge of less than a fourth of its entire revenue. The Vizier was, at the same time, relieved from the pressure of the European harpies who had long been preying on him, and of the monopolies they had inflicted on his country, under the influence of British supremacy. He was likewise exonerated from the payment of ten lacs of rupees a year, which had been allotted by Hastings for the office of the private agent of the Governor-General at the durbar, Major Palmer, of which his own share amounted to two lacs. Lord Cornwallis also conferred an inestimable boon on Oude by peremptorily refusing to recognize the claims of any of the private creditors of the Vizier, and thus rescued that kingdom from the fate of the Carnatic. But he could not fail to perceive the glaring abuses of the government, in which the Vizier took no further interest than to give the sanction of his authority to the acts of his servants, when they could prevail on him—which was rarely the case-to look into the affairs of the kingdom.

XVI.]

GUNTOOR SIRKAR DEMANDED.

The Vizier'sonly care was to obtain money for boundless dissipation; and so the zemindars were allowed to squeeze the ryots, the ministers squeezed the zemindars, and the Vizier extorted every rupee he could obtain from his ministers, and squandered it in cock-fighting and debaucheries, in maintaining a thousand horses in his private stables, which he never used, and a whole brigade of elephants.

Demand of the

1788

Lord Cornwallis, on leaving England, was espeGuntoor Sirkar, cially enjoined to amalgamate the King's and the Company's troops, and to secure the possession of the Guntoor Sirkar. The project of amalgamation was warmly espoused by the king and supported by his Ministers; no efforts, however, were made during the administration of Lord Cornwallis to carry it into effect, but on his return to England, after seven years of experience, he earnestly recommended the adoption of it to Mr. Dundas and the Court of Directors. The reversion of the Guntoor Sirkar, it will be remembered, was assigned by the Nizam to the Company by the treaty of 1768, after the death of his brother, Basalut Jung. He died in 1782, but the Nizam constantly evaded the surrender. Lord Cornwallis found him in 1786 involved in a war with Tippoo, and considered it inopportune to press the cession at the time. But in 1788, the prospect of continued peace with France, which removed all fear of European interference, and the aspect of politics in the Deccan, seemed to present a suitable occasion for making the demand. To obviate every difficulty, troops were drawn to the frontier, and Captain Kennaway, the Governor-General's aide-de-camp, was despatched to Hyderabad, "to demand the full execution of the treaty of 1768," with the intimation, that a British force was prepared to enter Guntoor in a fortnight. To the surprise of Lord Cornwallis, the Nizam ordered the immediate surrender of the district without any hesitation, as well as the adjust ment of all accounts; but at the same time he expressed his confidence that the Company's government would be prepared, with equal alacrity, to fulfil the obligations to which they

10

COUNTER DEMAND OF THE NIZAM.

[CHAP. were bound by it; namely, to send two battalions of sepoys and six pieces of artillery, manned by Europeans, whenever the Nizam should require them, and to reduce and transfer to him the province of the Carnatic Balaghaut, "then usurped by Hyder Naik." With his usual duplicity, the Nizam sent an envoy at the same time to Tippoo, to propose an alliance for the extirpation of the English. Tippoo readily assented to the proposal, on condition of receiving a daughter of the Nizam in marriage; but the Tartar blood of the son of Chin Kilich Khan boiled at the idea of a matrimonial alliance with the son of a naik, or head constable, and the negotiation fell to the ground.

Perplexity of

1789.

Lord Cornwallis was not a little perplexed by Lord Cornwallis, this manœuvre on the part of the Nizam. Since the treaty of 1768, the British Government had in two successive treaties acknowledged Hyder and Tippoo as the lawful sovereigns of the Carnatic Balaghaut. The Act of 1784 had, moreover, strictly prohibited the formation of alliances with native princes without sanction from home. But Lord Cornwallis deemed it important to British interests to secure the co-operation both of the Nizam and the Peshwa against the hostile designs of Tippoo, which were daily becoming more palpable. To meet the difficulties of the case, he addressed a letter to the Nizam, which was avowed to have the full force of a treaty, though it professed to be simply a clearer definition of the old compact. In this letter he stated that if the province in question should at any time come into the possession of the Company, with the assistance of his Highness, the stipulation of the treaty would be faithfully observed. The brigade of British troops, he said, should be furnished whenever the Nizam applied for its services, but with the understanding that it was not to be employed against any power in alliance with the English. A list of these powers was added to the document, but the name of Tippoo was omitted. This memorable letter, dated the 7th of July, 1789, has been considered by some writers of con