defence of the Ilbert Bill.
“More recently, the late P. E. Roberts, who contributed the acute and fair-minded chapters on Hastings to the Cambridge History of India, still asked himself if Hastings had deviated from what he regarded as 'the right course for English statesmen to follow in India'.
“Since 1947, however, the incentive to pass judgment on British India by acquitting or condemning Hastings is obviously much reduced, and the historian can concentrate on explanations rather than verdicts. Refusal to take sides on ground which has been so fiercely contested in the past may seem an insipid and timorous course. But attempts to fit the impeachment of Hastings into the moulds of later controversy, and, in particular, to see it as a conflict between the advocates and opponents of imperial expansion have seriously distorted the views of both Hastings and his accusers. Detachment also makes it possible to do justice to the intentions of both Burke and Hastings and to appreciate the suffering inflicted by the impeachment on both of them.
“In the first half of this book I have attempted to explain how Burke became convinced that Hastings had committed great crimes in India, why he achieved such a remarkable success in persuading the House of Commons to send Hastings to trial, and why the prosecution fared so badly in the House of Lords. It is clearly impossible to understand why Hastings was impeached without knowing something of the case against him. Between 4th April and 5th May 1786 Burke produced the following twenty-two 'Articles of Charge of High Crimes and Misdemeanors' against Hastings:
“i. The Rohilla War of 1774.
ii. The ending of the Mughal Emperor's stipend and the transfer of the districts of Kara and Allahabad from him to the Nawab Wazir of Oudh.
iii. The Benares charge, in which it was alleged that Hastings by his persecution had driven Raja Chait Singh of Benares to revolt in 1781.
iv. The confiscation in 1781 and 1782 of the landed income and treasure of the Begams of Oudh.
v. Hastings's treatment of the Nawab of Farrukhabad.
vi. Hastings's 'destruction' of the Raja of Salon.
vii. The awarding of corrupt and extravagant contracts.
viii. The illegal receipt of presents from Indians.
ix. Hastings's refusal to resign in 1777.
x. The Surgeon-General's contract.
xi. The contract for the repair of the pulbandi in Burdwan.
xii. The opium contracts.
xiii. The appointment of R. J. Sulivan as Resident to the Nawab of the Carnatic and the Nizam of Hyderabad.
xiv. Hastings's treatment of the Rana of Gohad.
xv. Hastings's revenue policy.
xvi. Various aspects of Hastings's policy in Oudh, described as 'Misdemeanors in Oude'.
xvii. Hastings's treatment of Muhammad Riza Khan.
xviii. Hastings's support of the Maratha leader Sindhia's influence at Delhi in 1784 and 1785.
xix. A 'libellous' letter of 20th March 1783 written by Hastings to the Court of Directors on the subject of Benares.
xx. The Maratha War.
xxi. The suppression of correspondence by Hastings.
xxii. Hastings's treatment of the Rohilla Faizullah Khan.
“These charges were debated by Committees of the Whole House in 1786 and 1787: the first charge was rejected, but the third, the fourth, the fifth, the seventh, the eighth, the fifteenth, and the twenty-second were passed. Six of the seven charges which had been accepted were redrafted as 'Articles of Impeachment' to be presented to the House of Lords, and on 10th May 1787 the House of Commons voted that Hastings should be impeached on these articles. A seventh article was added on 17th May. The sixteenth charge-on Hastings's policy in Oudh-passed a Committee of the Whole House on 14th May and was subsequently divided into thirteen separate articles of impeachment, so that Hastings was prosecuted before the Lords on twenty articles in all. The Managers for the House of Commons gave evidence on Benares and the Begams of Oudh during the first year of the trial, on part of the presents article in the second, and on the rest of the presents with the contracts, the fourteenth article (dealing with a present from Oudh) and some of the material in the revenue article during the third and fourth years. The Managers concluded their case on 30th May 1791, offering no evidence on the rest of the articles.
“The second half of this book consists of a discussion of the four principal charges-Benares, the Begams of Oudh, presents, and contracts-on which the House of Lords heard evidence. I have considered each charge more or less in isolation and have not tried to use this discussion to prove that Hastings did or did not deserve his acquittal or that he should or should not have been impeached. Apart from the problem of standards, as even Burke admitted, a final verdict on Hastings must depend not merely on 'some wrong actions during many years continuance in an arduous command' but on assessing the achievements as well as the blemishes of his administration. Inconclusive as the second part of this study must inevitably be, I hope that, as well as being a necessary complement to the first part, it will also contribute to an understanding of certain problems of eighteenth-century British-Indian history. The contracts and the presents charges throw light not only on Hastings's financial standards but on conditions in the Company's service as a whole, while the material in the Benares and the Begams charges illustrates the strains which accompanied the expansion of the Company's influence beyond Bengal and the way in which Indian authority crumbled before it.
“Feeling against the Company rose in the late 1760's with the attack on Clive, which was taken up by a Select Committee of the House of Commons in the sessions of 1772 and 1773. The Select Committee produced resolutions condemning Clive which were rejected by the House. But anxiety caused by the Committee's disclosures left its mark in certain clauses of Lord North's Regulating Act of 1773, which attempted to curb abuses by the company's servants. After the acquittal of Clive and the passing of the Regulating Act, pressure for Indian reform seems to have lacked any focal point until, in the late 1770's, Edmund Burke began to interest himself in the state of the Company's provinces. His tenacity, the warmth of his sympathies, his capacity for mastering detail, with his skill and experience in the House of Commons, made him a most formidable critic of the Company. From 1780 to 1784 the East India Company went through a crisis very similar to that of 1772-3. The government was again obliged to intervene in its affairs, and once again public anxiety about scandals helped to force the government's hand. As in 1772, pressure from outside the administration was channeled through a Select Committee, now dominated by Burke. Much of the agitation was again directed against an outstanding figure in the Company's service-on this occasion it was Warren Hastings. The new Select Committee was far more articulate than its predecessor in urging positive measures of reform. Its work culminated in the second of two India Bills, drafted by Burke and introduced by fox in December 1783. The Bills and the government were defeated, but many of the recommendations of the second Bill were included in Pitt's India Act of 1784.
“Burke's work on the Select Committee appears in retrospect to have been the most constructive period of his Indian career. But he himself did not regard it as complete until he had brought about the punishment, or at least the further exposure, of the man against whom many of the Committee's reports had been directed. The Indian crisis subsided after 1784, but Hastings was not to escape as Clive had done. In the sessions of 1786 and 1787 Burke won a remarkable personal triumph in persuading the House of Commons to impeach Hastings.
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