HASTINGS, WARREN (1732-1818), the first governor general of British India, was born on Dec. 6, i732, in the hamlet of Churchill, near Daylesford, of an old Oxfordshire family which had fallen into poverty. His mother died a few days after giving him birth; his father, Pynaston Hastings, drifted away to perish obscurely in the West Indies. Young Hastings attended a charity school in his native village until, at the age of eight, he was taken in charge by an uncle, Howard Hastings, who held a post in the customs. After two years at a private school at Newington Butts, he was sent to Westminster, where Thurlow, Shelburne, Elijah Impey, and the poets Cowper and Churchill were among his contemporaries. In 1749, his uncle died, leaving him to the care of a distant kinsman, Mr. Creswicke, who sent his ward to seek his fortune as a "writer" in Bengal.
When Hastings landed at Calcutta in October 175o the affairs of the East India Company were at a low ebb. In southern India French influence was predominant. Bengal, however, was under the able government of Ali Vardi Khan, who peremptorily for bade the foreign settlers at Calcutta and Chandernagore to in troduce feuds from Europe. Hastings was placed in charge of an aurang or factory in the interior, where his duties would be to superintend the weaving of silk and cotton goods under a sys tem of money advances. In 1753 he was transferred to Cos simbazar the river-port of the native capital of Murshidabad. In 1756 the old nawab died, and was succeeded by his grandson Suraj-ud Dowlah, a young madman of 19, whose name is indelibly associated with the tragedy of the Black Hole. When Suraj-ud Dowlah resolved to drive the English out of Bengal, his first step was to occupy the fortified factory at Cossimbazar, and imprison Hastings and his companions. Hastings was soon released at the intercession of the Dutch resident, and made use of his position at Murshidabad to open negotiations with the English fugitives at Falta, the site of a Dutch factory near the mouth of the Hugli. After a while he fled from the Mohammedan court to join the main body of the English at Falta.
When the relieving force arrived from Madras under Colonel Clive and Admiral Watson, Hastings enrolled himself as a volun teer, and took part in the action which led to the recovery of Calcutta. Clive appointed him in 1758 resident at the court of Murshidabad. There he first came into collision with the Bengali Brahman, Nuncomar. During his three years of office as resident he served the Company well, but his name nowhere occurs in the official lists of those who derived pecuniary profit from the necessities and weakness of the native court. In 1761 he was pro moted to be member of council, under the presidency of Van sittart, who had been introduced by Clive from Madras. The period of Vansittart's government has been truly described as "the most revolting page of our Indian history." The administra tion was left in the hands of the nawab, while a few irresponsible English traders had drawn to themselves all real power. The members of council, the commanders of the troops, and the com mercial residents plundered on a grand scale. The youngest ser vant of the Company claimed the right of trading on his own account, free from taxation and from local jurisdiction, not only for himself but also for every native subordinate whom he might permit to use his name.
This exemption, threatening the very foundations of the Muslim government, finally led to a rupture with the nawab. Sometimes in conjunction only with Vansittart, sometimes absolutely alone, Hastings protested unceasingly against the policy and practices of his colleagues. On one occasion he was stigmatized in a minute by Batson with "having espoused the nawab's cause, and as a hired solicitor defended all his actions, however dishonourable and detrimental to the Company." An altercation ensued. Batson gave him the lie and struck him in the council chamber. When war was actually begun, Hastings officially recorded his previous resolution to have resigned, in order to repudiate responsibility for measures which he had always opposed. After the decisive victory of Buxar over the allied forces of Bengal and Oudh, he resigned his seat and sailed for England in November 1764.
Fourteen years' residence in Bengal had not made Hastings a rich man, estimated by the opportunities of his position. Ac cording to the custom of the time he had augmented his slender salary by private trade. At a later date he was charged by Burke with having taken up profitable contracts for supplying bullocks for the use of the Company's troops. It is admitted that he conducted by means of agents a large business in timber in the Gangetic Sundarbans. When at Falta he had married Mrs. Buchanan, the widow of an officer. She bore him two children, of whom one died in infancy at Murshidabad, and was shortly followed by her mother 0759). The other child, a son, was sent to England, and also died shortly before his father's return. While at home Hastings made the personal acquaintance of Samuel Johnson and Lord Mansfield. In 1766 he was called upon to give evidence before a committee of the House of Commons upon the affairs of Bengal.
In the winter of 1768, Hastings received the appointment of second in council at Madras. Among his companions on his voyage round the Cape were the Baron Imhoff, a speculative portrait-painter, and his wife, a lady of some personal attractions and great social charm, who was destined henceforth to be Has tings's lifelong companion. At Madras he won the good-will of his employers by devoting himself to the improvement of their manufacturing business, and he kept his hands clean from the prevalent taint of pecuniary transactions with the nawab of the Carnatic. He drew up a scheme for the construction of a pier at Madras, to avoid the dangers of landing through the surf, and instructed his brother-in-law in England to obtain estimates from the engineers Brindley and Smeaton.
In 1772 he was nominated to the second place in council in Bengal with a promise of the reversion of the governorship when Mr. Cartier should retire. The second governorship of Clive was marked by the transfer of the diwani or financial administra tion from the Mogul emperor to the Company, and by the en forcement of stringent regulations against the besetting sin of peculation. But Clive was followed by two inefficient successors; and in 177o occurred the most terrible Indian famine on record, which is credibly estimated to have swept away one-third of the population. In April i 7 7 2 Warren Hastings took his seat as presi dent of the council at Fort William. His first care was to effect a radical reform in the system of government. Clive's plan of governing through the agency of the native court had proved a failure. The directors were determined "to stand forth as diwan, and take upon themselves by their own servants the entire management of the revenues." All the officers of administration were transferred from Murshidabad to Calcutta, which Hastings boasted at this early date that he would make the first city in Asia.
This reform involved the ruin of many native reputations, and for a second time brought Hastings into collision with Nuncomar. At the same time a settlement of the land revenue on leases for five years was begun, and the police and military systems of the country were placed upon a new footing. Hastings was a man of immense industry, with an insatiable appetite for detail. The whole of this large series of reforms was conducted under his own personal supervision. As a measure of economy, the stipend paid to the titular nawab of Bengal, who was then a minor, was reduced by one-half—to sixteen laklis a year (say £i6o,000). Macaulay imputes this reduction to Hastings as a characteristic act of financial immorality ; but it had been expressly enjoined by the court of directors, in a despatch dated six months before Hastings took up office. His bargains with Shuja-ud-Dowlah, the nawab wazir of Oudh, stand on a different basis. The Mah rattas had got possession of, the person of the Mogul emperor, Shah Alam, from whom Clive obtained the grant of Bengal in i 765, and to whom he assigned in return the districts of Allahabad and Kora and a tribute of £300,000.
With the emperor in their camp, the Mahrattas were threaten ing the province of Oudh. Hastings, as a deliberate measure of policy, withheld the tribute due to the emperor, and resold Allahabad and Kora to the wazir of Oudh. The Mahrattas re treated, and danger for the time was dissipated by the death of their principal leader. The wazir now determined to satisfy an old quarrel against the adjoining tribe of Rohillas, who had estab lished themselves for some generations in a fertile tract west of Oudh. They were not so much the occupiers of the soil as a dominant caste of warriors and freebooters. But in those troubled days their title was as good as any to be found in India. After some hesitation, Hastings allowed the Company's troops to be used to further the designs of his Oudh ally, in consideration of a payment to the Bengal treasury. The Rohillas were defeated. Some of them fled the country, and so far as possible Hast ings obtained terms for those who remained. The fighting, no doubt, on the part of the wazir was conducted with all the savagery of Oriental warfare ; but there is no evidence that it was a war of extermination.
Meanwhile the Regulating Act, passed by the North ministry in 1773, changed the constitution of the Bengal government. The council was reduced to four members with a governor-general, with certain indefinite powers of control over the presidencies of Madras and Bombay. Hastings was named in the act as governor general for a term of five years. The council consisted of Gen eral Clavering and Colonel Monson, two third-rate politicians of considerable parliamentary influence; Philip Francis (q.v.), then only known as an able permanent official ; and Barwell, of the Bengal Civil Service. At the same time a supreme court of judi cature was appointed, composed of a chief and three puisne judges, to exercise an indeterminate jurisdiction at Calcutta. The chief-justice was Sir Elijah Impey, already mentioned as a schoolfellow of Hastings at Westminster. The tendency of the Regulating Act was to establish for the first time the influence of the crown, or rather of parliament, in Indian affairs. The new members of council disembarked at Calcutta on Oct. 19, 1774 ; and on the following day commenced the long feud which scarcely terminated twenty-one years later with the acquittal of Warren Hastings by the House of Lords. Taking advantage of an ambiguous clause in their commission, the majority of the council (for Barwell uniformly sided with Hastings) reviewed the recent measures of the governor-general. All that he had done they condemned; all that they could they reversed. Hast ings was reduced to the position of a cipher at their meetings. They listened to detailed allegations of corruption brought against him by Nuncomar.
Hastings disdained to reply, and referred his accuser to the supreme court. The majority of the council, in their executive capacity, resolved that the governor-general had been guilty of peculation, and ordered him to refund. A few days later Nun comar was thrown into prison on a charge of forgery preferred by a private prosecutor, tried before the supreme court sitting in bar, found guilty by a jury of Englishmen and sentenced to be hanged. Hastings always maintained that he did not cause the charge to be instituted, and the legality of Nuncomar's trial is thoroughly proved by Sir James Stephen. The majority of the council abandoned their supporter, who was executed in due course. He had forwarded a petition for reprieve to the council, which Clavering took care should not be presented in time, and which was subsequently burnt by the common hang man on the motion of Francis. Meanwhile, Hastings had sent an agent to England with a general authority to place his resignation in the hands of the Company under certain conditions. The resigna tion was promptly accepted, and one of the directors was appointed to the vacancy. But in the meantime Colonel Monson had died, and Hastings was thus restored, by virtue of his casting vote, to the supreme management of affairs. He refused to ratify his resignation; and when Clavering attempted to seize the governor-generalship, he judiciously obtained an opinion from the judges of the supreme court in his favour. Hastings was never again subjected to gross insult, and his general policy prevailed.
A crisis was now approaching in foreign affairs. Bengal was prosperous, and free from external enemies on every quarter. But the government of Bombay had hurried on a rupture with the Mahratta confederacy at a time when France was on the point of declaring war against England, and when England was faced with revolt in America. Hastings shouldered the whole responsibility of military affairs. The French settlements in India were promptly occupied. On the part of Bombay, the Mahratta war was conducted with procrastination and disgrace. But Hastings avenged the capitulation of Wargaon by the com plete success of his own plan of operations. Goddard with a Bengal army marched across India, and achieved almost without a blow the conquest of Gujarat. Popham stormed the rock fort ress of Gwalior, then deemed impregnable and the key of centrai India ; and by this feat held in check Sindhia, the most formida ble of the Mahratta chiefs. The Bhonsla Mahratta raja of Nag pur, whose dominions bordered on Bengal, was won over by the diplomacy of an emissary of Hastings.
But while these events were taking place, a new source of em barrassment had arisen at Calcutta. The supreme court assumed a jurisdiction of first instance over the entire province of Bengal. The English common law, was arbitrarily extended to an alien system of society. Zaminddrs, or government renters, were arrested on mesne process; the sanctity of the zencina was violated by the sheriff's officer; the deepest feelings of the people and the entire fabric of revenue administration were alike disregarded. On this point the entire council acted in harmony. Hastings and Francis went joint-bail for imprisoned natives of distinction. At last, after the dispute between the judges and the executive threatened to become a trial of armed force, Hastings set it at rest by a characteristic stroke of policy. A new judicial office was created in the name of the Company, to which Impey was ap pointed. The understanding between Hastings and Francis was for a short period extended to general policy. Francis received patronage for his friends, while Hastings was to be unimpeded in the control of foreign affairs. But a difference of interpretation arose. Hastings recorded in an official minute that he had found Francis's private and public conduct to be "void of truth and honour." They met as duellists. Francis fell wounded, and soon afterwards returned to England.
The Mahratta war was not yet terminated, when a more formi dable danger threatened the English in India. The Madras' authorities had irritated beyond endurance the two greatest Mussulman powers in the peninsula, the nizam of the Deccan and Hyder Ali, the usurper of Mysore, who began to negotiate an alliance with the Mahrattas. A second time the genius of Hast ings saved the situation. On the arrival of the news that Hyder had descended from the highlands of Mysore, cut to pieces the only British army in the field, and swept the Carnatic up to the gates of Madras, he adopted a daring policy. He signed a blank treaty of peace with the Mahrattas, who were still in arms, re versed the action of the Madras government towards the nizam, and concentrated all the resources of Bengal against Hyder Ali. Sir Eyre Coote was sent by sea to Madras with all the troops and treasure available ; and reinforcements marched southwards under Colonel Pearse along the coast line of Orissa. The landing of Coote preserved Madras from destruction, though the war lasted through many campaigns and only terminated with the death of Hyder. Pearse's detachment was decimated by an epi demic of cholera (perhaps the first mention of this disease by name in Indian history) ; but the survivors penetrated to Madras, held Bhonsla and the nizam in check, and corroborated the lesson taught by Goddard—that the Company's sepoys could march any where, when boldly led.
Hastings had to provide the ways and means for this exhaust ing war. He reformed the collection of the land tax and the gov ernment monopolies of opium and salt were placed upon a re munerative basis. Pressing demands were met by loans, and in at least one case from the private purse of the governor-general. Hasting's fertile mind at once turned to the hoards of the native princes. Chait Sing, raja of Benares, the greatest of the vassal chiefs who had grown rich under British protection, lay under sus picion of disloyalty. The wazir of Oudh had fallen into arrears for the maintenance of the Company's garrison posted in his domin ions, and his administration was in disorder. In his case the ancestral hoards were under the control of his mother, the begum of Oudh, into whose hands they had passed when Hastings was powerless in council.
Hastings resolved to make a progress up country to arrange the affairs of both provinces, and bring back all the treasure that could be squeezed out of its holders. When he reached Benares and presented his demands, the raja rose in insurrection, and the governor-general barely escaped with his life. But Popham rallied a force for his defence. The insurgents were defeated again and again; Chait Sing took to flight, and an augmented permanent tribute was imposed upon his successor. The wazir of Oudh consented to everything demanded of him. The begum was charged with having abetted Chait Sing in his rebellion ; and after severe pressure applied to herself and her attendant eunuchs, a fine of more than a million sterling was exacted from her. Hast ings appears to have been uneasy about the incidents of this expe dition, and to have anticipated censure in England. He therefore procured documentary evidence of the rebellious intentions of the raja and the begum, to the validity of which Impey obligingly lent his extra-judicial sanction.
The remainder of Hastings's term of office in India was passed in comparative tranquillity. But in England the long struggle be tween the Company and the ministers of the crown for the su preme control of Indian affairs and the attendant patronage had reached its climax. The success of Hastings's administration alone postponed the solution. His original term of five years would have expired in 1778; but it was annually prolonged by special act of parliament until his voluntary resignation. Indian affairs formed at this time the hinge on which party politics turned. On one occasion Dundas carried a motion in the House of Commons, censuring Hastings and demanding his recall. The directors of the Company were disposed to agree ; but in the court of pro prietors Hastings always possessed a sufficient majority. Fox's India Bill led to the downfall of the Coalition ministry in 1783. The act which Pitt carried in 1784 introduced a new constitution, in which Hastings felt that he had no place. In February 1785 he sailed from Calcutta, after a dignified ceremony of resignation, and amid enthusiastic farewells from all classes.
On his arrival in England, after a second absence of sixteen years, he was well received. Pitt had never taken a side against him, while Thurlow was his pronounced friend. But Francis, whom he had discomfited in the council chamber at Calcutta, was more than his match in the parliamentary arena. Burke had taken the subject races of India under the protection of his eloquence. Francis, who had been the early friend of Burke, supplied him with the animus against Hastings, and with the knowledge of de tail, which he might otherwise have lacked. The Whig party followed Burke's lead. Dundas, Pitt's favourite subordinate, had already committed himself by his earlier resolution of censure ; and Pitt was induced by motives which are still obscure to incline the ministerial majority to the same side. To meet the oratory of Burke and Sheridan and Fox, Hastings wrote an elaborate minute with which he wearied the ears of the House for two successive nights, and he subsidized a swarm of pamphleteers. The impeachment was decided upon in 1786, but the actual trial did not commence until 1788. For seven long years Hastings was upon his defence on the charge of "high crimes and mis demeanours." During this anxious period he bore himself with characteristic dignity.
At last, in 1795, the House of Lords gave a verdict of not guilty on all charges laid against him ; and he left the bar at which he had so frequently appeared, with his reputation clear, but ruined in fortune. The wealth he brought back from India was swal lowed up in the expenses of his trial. He forwarded a petition to Pitt praying that he might be reimbursed his costs from the public funds. This petition, of course, was rejected. At last, when he was reduced to actual destitution, it was arranged that the East India Company should grant him an annuity of £4,000 for a term of years, with £90,000 paid down in advance. This annuity expired before his death ; and he was compelled to make more than one fresh appeal to the bounty of the Company, which was never withheld. Shortly before his acquittal he had fulfilled the dream of his childhood, by buying back the ancestral manor of Daylesford, where the remainder of his life was passed in honourable retirement. In 1813 he was called on to give evidence upon Indian affairs before the two houses of parliament, which received him with exceptional marks of respect. The university of Oxford conferred on him the honorary degree of D.C.L.; and in the following year he was sworn to the privy council. He died on Aug. 22, 1818, in his 86th year, and lies buried behind the chancel of the parish church, which he had recently restored at his own charges.
In physical appearance, Hastings "looked like a great man, and not like a bad man." The body was wholly subjugated to the mind. A frame naturally slight had been further attenuated by rigorous habits of temperance, and thus rendered proof against the diseases of the tropics. Against his private character not even calumny has breathed a reproach. As brother, as husband and as friend, his affections were as steadfast as they were warm. A classical education and the instincts of family pride saved him from the greed and the vulgar display which marked the typical "nabob." Concerning his second marriage, it suffices to say that the Baroness Imhoff was nearly forty years of age, with a family of grown-up children, when the law of her native land allowed her to become Mrs. Hastings. She survived her husband, who cherished towards her to the last the sentiments of a lover. Her children he adopted as his own; and it was chiefly for her sake that he desired the peerage which was twice held out to him.
Hastings's public career will probably never cease to be a sub ject of controversy. He was the scapegoat upon whose head par liament laid the accumulated sins, real and imaginary, of the East India Company. If the acquisition of the Indian empire can be supported on ethical grounds, Hastings needs no defence. No one who reads his private correspondence will admit that even his least defensible acts were dictated by dishonourable motives. On certain of his public measures no difference of opinion can arise. He was the first to attempt to open a trade route with Tibet, and to organize a survey of Bengal and of the eastern seas. He persuaded the pundits of Bengal to disclose the treasures of Sanskrit to European scholars. He founded the Madrasa or college for Mahommedan education at Calcutta, primarily out of his own funds; and he projected the foundation of an Indian institute in England. The Bengal Asiatic Society was established under his auspices, though he yielded the post of president to Sir W. Jones.
No Englishman ever understood the native character so well as Hastings; none ever devoted himself more heartily to the promotion of every scheme, great and small, that could advance the prosperity of India. Natives and Anglo-Indians alike venerate his name, the former as their first beneficient administrator, the latter as the most able and most enlightened of their own class. If Clive's sword conquered the Indian empire, it was the brain of Hastings that planned the system of civil administration, and his genius that saved the empire in its darkest hour.
See G. R. Gleig, Memoirs of Warren Hastings (3 vols., 1841) ; A. Lyall, Warren Hastings (1889 2nd ed. 1902) ; L. J. Trotter, Warren Hastings (189o) ; G. W. Forrest, The Administration of Warren Hast ings (Calcutta, 1892) ; F. M. Holmes, Four Heroes of India (1892) ; G. B. Malleson, Life of Warren Hastings (1894) ; C. Lawson, The Private Life of Warren Hastings (1895) ; L. W. Hunter, Warren Hast ings' Defence of his Administration (1908) ; G. W. Hastings, A Vindi cation of Warren Hastings (1909) . See also J. Stephen, The Story of Nuncomar (1885) ; J. Strachey, Hastings and the Rohilla War (1892) ; S. C. Grier, Letters of Warren Hastings to his Wife (19o5) ; M. E. M. Jones, Warren Hastings in Bengal, 1772-4 (1918) ; H. Dodwell, Warren Hastings' Letters to Sir John Macpherson (1927). (J. S. Co.; X.)