CHAPTER XXIII.

THE BRITISH EMPIRE.

I.

INDIA AND CEYLON (1785-1815).

 

When Warren Hastings sailed from Calcutta on February 8,1785, he left behind him established authority and ideals of government and policy such as no British representative before him had set forth in India. He had made it impossible for England to be content with a trading interest, to hold herself apart from the intricacies and passions of native politics, or to disdain a knowledge of Oriental literature and philosophy, and the geographical and historical conditions of Eastern life. For good or ill, England, in the guise of the East India Company, had become a partner in the development of the vast Indian peninsula. Would she remain content with a merely transitory concern in the struggles of dynasties and adventurers, and in the welfare or distress of millions of rural cultivators; or would her agents, by ambition or by the sheer force of circumstances, be led to fight for supremacy, diplo­matic, political, and eventually territorial? The next twenty years were to give a final answer to this question.

A year of lassitude succeeded in the British administration the vigorous rule of Hastings. John Macpherson, as senior in the Council, succeeded to the post of Governor-General. Though he had only since 1781 been prominent in Calcutta, he had long been concerned in Indian affairs. But his connexion with the financial transactions of the Nawáb of Arcot (or the Carnatic) had not been free from suspicion; and there was little confidence in his capacity as a statesman. In the hope of holding his high position for a term of years, he began by an attempt at revenue reform; but in this his successor could not find that he had achieved any success. Macpherson’s government, wrote Lord Cornwallis in the next year, for the private information of Dundas and Pitt, “had no authority, and the grossest frauds were daily committed before their faces; their whole conduct, and all their pretensions to economy, except in the reduction of salaries, were a scene of delusion.”

In the familiar business of the Nawáb of Arcot’s debts, Macpherson inherited the difficulties of Hastings and the troublesome assistance of Lord Macartney, the Governor of Madras. This vigorous and independent official had pursued a policy of his own at Madras, which was, perhaps too hastily, terminated by his resignation, on the news of the appointment of John Hollond as his successor; but he visited Calcutta in the summer of 1785 in order to impress his views on Macpherson; and he was not without hope of returning to India as Governor-General.

It was a period when popular interest in Indian affairs had for the first time been aroused, when the excitement caused by the India Bills had not yet subsided, and when Great Britain first showed a sense of her growing responsibilities in the East But there was no agreement among either statesmen at home, or those in India, as to the right course to be adopted in that country. The difficulties were appreciated by Pitt and Dundas; and they determined to inaugurate a new system by sending out to India a statesman of distinction, unfettered by past experience or local ties. Lord Macartney seemed to them inadmissible, not only because of his close association with Anglo-Indian party feeling, but because he insisted upon receiving an English peerage as a preliminary to his appointment as Governor-General. In 1782 Lord Shelburne had offered the post to Charles, Earl Cornwallis, to whom Junius had referred as a young man whose spirited conduct might atone for the deficiencies of his understanding, but whose military abilities were somewhat discredited by his surrender at Yorktown in 1781. In 1785 the offer was repeated by Pitt; and, now that the East India Act had largely increased the power of the office, it was accepted. A Supplementary Act (1786) conferred still greater powers upon the Governor-General and the Governors of the different Presidencies; and in 1788 the Declaratory Act gave the Board of Control power to send troops to India without having regard to the wishes of the Directors.

Cornwallis sailed for India on May 5, 1786. He touched at Madras on August 24, and reached Calcutta on September 12. From the moment of his arrival he found himself beset with difficulties, which the easy­going incompetence of Macpherson had rendered acute. The most serious of these was the entanglement proceeding from the war of 1785, waged by Tipu, the Sultan of Mysore, against the Marathas and the Nizám. Nána Farnavís, the guardian and minister of the sixth Maritha Peshwa, had applied to Bombay for assistance, and, referred to Calcutta, had been informed by Macpherson that the Treaty of Silbái (1782) stipulated, not that the friends and enemies of the two States should be common, but that neither party should afford assistance to the enemies of the other, while the Treaty of Mangalore forbade the English to assist the enemies of Tipu. Nina then applied to the Portuguese. Macpherson scented a new danger, and sent Charles Warre Malet as resident to Poona; and an offer of troops from Bombay was authorised. Cornwallis immediately repudiated the transaction as contrary to treaty. But the difficulties were even more pressing in internal than in external affairs; and it was as a reformer of British administration that the new Governor-General was chiefly to be famed. A man of sensitive honour and devoted to duty, he had taken office only on the grant of full powers in both civil and military matters; and, empowered as he was by the Supplementary Act of 1786 to act on occasion even against the votes of the majority of his Council, he regarded the authority placed in his hands as the only chance of “saving this country.” “Mr Fox’s plan,” said he, “would have ruined all.” He proceeded to act with decisive vigour in regard to the scandalous abuses which still clung to the British administration.

Macpherson had spoken of “the relaxed habits” of the public service in India. This meant the system of small salaries and large perquisites, and the immense number of half-recognised methods of obtaining money to which British officials had resort—monopolies, offices at native Courts, jobbing agencies, sinecures of many different kinds; to which must be added the abuse of the Directors’ patronage, and of the influence of powerful persons at home, among whom the Prince of Wales was con­spicuous. For three years Cornwallis devoted himself to the suppression of such abuses; and his determination, dignity, and untarnished personal honour enabled him to succeed. He persuaded the Court of Directors to augment salaries, on the principle that good pay is the parent of good work and he left behind him a purified and energetic public service.

No less vitally did his work affect the nature of British rule in India when he took in hand the reform of the police system and the revenue settlement of Bengal. Hitherto the Company’s collectors had enjoyed certain powers of civil jurisdiction, while the criminal law had been administered by the Nawáb Názim and his native assistant; from these there was appeal to the Sadr Diwáni Adálat (supreme civil Court) and the Nizámat Adálat (supreme criminal Court) respectively. This system resulted in both uncertainty of jurisdiction and diversity of practice; punishments were irrationally severe or absurdly lax. Over all the districts of the Bengal territory Cornwallis placed British judges and magistrates; and above these he established Provincial Courts of Appeal at Calcutta, Patna, Dacca, and Murshidábád. Under the magistrates were placed daroghas, or heads of police, who had authority to arrest and to take bail. The Mohammadan Code was followed in criminal cases, the barbarity of its punishments being mitigated, and its rules of evidence revised, in accordance with English principles. In civil cases Hindu or Mohammadan assessors assisted the British magistrate to deal with the intricacies of religious and social custom. The changes introduced by Cornwallis marked an era in the British occupation ; they defined jurisdiction and created procedure; and the Regulations of 1793 practically formed a new Code, which has been the basis of all subsequent legislation. They bear the marks of an anxious regard for civil and religious feeling among different classes and creeds, and of a clear and orderly method, which replaced the inconsistent and arbitrary arrange­ment of the earlier days of British occupation. It was their great aim to replace the privilege of the conquerors by a full recognition of general rights. Government, in its own words, “ divested itself of the power of infringing in its executive capacity on the rights and privileges” which it had conferred upon the landholders. The judicial reforms were, indeed, intimately connected with the central fact of Cornwallis’ administration, the Permanent Settlement of Bengal (1793).

The difficulties connected with the land revenue demanded the atten­tion of the Governor-General from the moment of his arrival in India. Hastings had dealt with them by way of enquiry and of tentative endeavour to reach a standard rate of assessment; but his determined rival, Philip Francis, had espoused the view that the zamindars, who were the farmers of the revenue and collected it from the raiyats, had indefeasible, if restricted, proprietary rights; and the Directors had concluded that it was with them that a permanent settlement must be made. They condemned the frequent changes of system, the failure of all attempts to increase the revenue, and the accumulating arrears; and they had assumed that there was already sufficient information in the possession of the Government in India to justify a coherent and per­manent reform. They regarded the settlement of the revenue as part of the reorganisation of the Government at Calcutta, which they directed in a letter from the Court at the end of 1785. The Bengal Government was to consist of four branches—a Board of Council, a Military Board, a Board of Revenue, and a Board of Trade, each with definite duties. The Revenue Board was to order an assessment of the revenue, to last for ten years, and then, if satisfactory, to become permanent. The plan of the Directors was made; Cornwallis was to carry it out.

The Governor-General was thus in no sense the originator of the Permanent Settlement; nor was he personally responsible for any theory of Indian ownerships which assimilated their position to that of English landlords. Though he came with instructions, he came with an open mind; and he was soon convinced that there was not as yet enough information to justify a permanent arrangement. He entrusted to John Shore the preparation of an exhaustive paper on the proposed settlement. The point of most critical importance was the position of the Bengal zamindars—were they merely the government agents for the collection of taxes, or were they the hereditary owners of the land, subject only to the tax due to the Government? Shore held that the proprietary right belonged to the zamindars; the position of the talukdars, or intermediate owners, was left more vague; and there were many other classes whom it was difficult to bring into a consistent scheme. Shore’s view, however, was clear; he summed it up in an ancient saying, that “the land belonged to the zamindars and the rent to the King”; and this view was on the whole accepted.

At the end of 1789 plans were matured for the settlement of the revenue; and these plans involved the substitution of uniform statutory titles among the landholders for uncertain and fluctuating customary rights. While these legal rights were given to a large class of landlords, the position of the cultivators was to be secured by a universal system of declaratory leases. Herein, as it proved, lay the weak point of the settlement. The settlement with the zamindars was unavoidable; but the rights of the cultivators were not sufficiently secured. The zamindars were recognised as the owners of the soil on the payment of a fixed land-tax, which was not to be increased; the rents of the independent cultivator were not to be raised; registers of tenures were to be kept; and the cultivators were to receive leases (pattas), and to have the remedy of civil action if these were infringed.

Was this settlement, which was designed at first to be for ten years, to be made permanent? Cornwallis wished this; but Shore, with fuller knowledge of local conditions, deprecated it. The Directors at home deliberated for two years, having before them elaborate arguments on both sides; but at last they accepted the view of Cornwallis. On March 22, 1793, the Governor-General declared the settlement to be permanent. This act, the most important that had affected native society under British government, had undoubtedly the effect of creating a feeling of security in the native mind with regard to British rule. It showed that the Company intended to be honest, and to be just. But it caused very grave evils. Defective statistics of area and value led to unforeseen hardships. It was impossible to create a uniform system by a stroke of the pen; and an agrarian and social revolution was the result, in which the old landed class of Bengal was broken up. A strain of punctuality, legality, exactness, was placed upon the ancient rajas, which they were unable to bear; and a large part of Bengal changed hands. Middlemen ousted the old families and oppressed the cultivators. A new class of zamindars was soon called into existence, who managed their estates on purely business principles. The cultivators were the sufferers; the legal protections proved nugatory; and twenty years later a Governor-General found their position “desperate.” It was not till 1859 that they were legally secured in the right of which it had never been intended to deprive them.

Though Cornwallis was not the originator of the Permanent Settlement, it is with his name that the act is indelibly associated. He was the statesman who carried it through; he brought together divergent opinions, worked out a coherent policy, and embodied it in a permanent memorial. British authority showed itself content with much less than the ancient conquerors of Bengal had exacted, willing to make sacrifices for the benefit of its subjects, and desirous of building a fabric of good government on the security and happiness of the people. It may be that the results were not equal to the expectations; but the principles embodied in the Settlement were of the first importance in the history of a great experiment—that of governing a vast Eastern territory by the methods and morals of the West.

In the external relations of the East India Company within the Indian peninsula Cornwallis did important work, but nothing which takes rank with the police or the revenue reforms. He was decided, but not bigoted, in his view of the wisdom of non-intervention; but events were too strong for him. His action may be briefly summarised. The long-standing difficulty with Oudh became for a moment acute. The maintenance of two brigades of British trained troops caused a heavy drain; and the other pecuniary burdens were no less oppressive. Discontent grew dangerous. Cornwallis believed Oudh to be in need of military defence. British fame at the moment, he thought, did not stand high; Colonel Baillie’s defeat at Perambakam (1780) was known all over India; Sindhia and the Sikhs were growing in power; the British troops could not be reduced. But Cornwallis diminished the demand on the treasure of the Nawab Wazir from 8-1 to 50 lacs, and he drove from the oppressed country as many of the pilfering European adventurers, agents, and jobbers, as he could. In southern India the British position was hampered by the projects, feared often without reason, of the French. Before the Revolution, isolated adventurers were believed to receive support from Versailles ; a little later the East became prominent in the vast schemes of Bonaparte. In 1793 Pondicherry and all the French settlements were easily taken; but the danger came from Europe.

In 1788 British relations with the Nizám reached one of the recurrent crises which disturbed the politics of the Madras Presidency. The Nizám, placed between the Peshwa of Poona, and Tipu Sultan of Mysore, intrigued and shuffled; only on the proposal of a matrimonial alliance from the latter did he turn towards the English. Cornwallis found himself in a difficulty which the framers of the Regulating Act (1773) ought to have foreseen. Danger from Tipu was evidently growing; alliance with native Princes without leave from home was forbidden; but time pressed. The Governor-General kept the Act in letter but broke it in spirit by writing a letter to the Nizám, which he declared to be of force as binding as a treaty. He promised to supply the troops which the Nizám declared to be essential to his safety; he stipulated that they were not to be used against the allies of the British; and, when he enumerated those allies, he omitted the name of Tipu. A mass of recrimination clusters in the documents of the day round this somewhat shifty action of a high-principled man. Tipu intended war; and it is doubtful whether Cornwallis accelerated it.

On December 29, 1789, Tipu attacked Travancore. Cornwallis, who had previously instructed Hollond, the Governor of Madras, to promise assistance—an instruction which had not been carried out— determined to defend the Rája. He made a triple league with the Marathas (June 1) and the Nizam (June 4, 1790); and three campaigns against Mysore followed. Into the details of these campaigns it is unnecessary to enter; but they presented features which give them special importance. The Governor-General himself took command in 1791; there was a pomp and magnificence in the proceedings which impressed on the people the fact that British rule was Imperial, like the rule of the Moghuls before it. But, on the other hand, the inadequacy of British preparations was soon evident. Supplies were insufficient; the country was almost unknown; native allies proved of little assistance. British officers themselves were forced to admit the failure of their equipments; and Cornwallis' first campaign ended in retreat. At the end of February, 1792, however, peace was won at the gates of Seringapatam. One-third of Tipu’s dominions was surrendered to the allies; and an indemnity of £3,000,000 was exacted. The gallant little State of Coorg, long oppressed by Tipu, was freed from his grasp; and in despatches it was plainly hinted that, if the Mohammadan Prince proved refractory, the old Hindu dynasty might be restored in Mysore itself.

Whatever may be thought of the wisdom of Cornwallis’ action as regards Mysore, it can hardly be doubted that in the Carnatic his action was disastrous. He undertook the management of the country for a time in such a way as to destroy all chance of an efficient native administration. The treaties of 1787 and 1792, the latter of which placed the Carnatic under the administration of Madras, were ineffective and inadequate solutions of a difficulty which demanded a decisive solution. In October, 1793, Cornwallis sailed for England. He left behind him the reputation of a just and honourable administrator; and his creative work was the most enduring that Englishmen had, so far, accomplished in India.

Still greater interest was aroused by the impeachment of Warren Hastings. While caricaturists were representing the Governor on his return as welcomed to St James’ for his ill-earned wealth, Burke was denouncing him as the plunderer of Bengal and the murderer of Nuncomar. On April 26, 1786, the charges were preferred; on February 13, 1788, the trial began in Westminster Hall. As a ceremonial display, it was equal to anything that London had seen in the century; and in eloquence Sheridan and Burke had never been surpassed. Court interest and party passion were alike aroused; politics and fashion combined to make the trial of the great man who had saved the British possessions in India a scene of excitement and emotion unsurpassed even in that historic place. Of the charges it is here enough to say that hardly a single act of Hastings’ administration was left untouched; but, while they dealt with details, it soon became plain enough that the true reasons for the impeachment were, first, the private animosity of Philip Francis, and, secondly, the public policy of the party of Fox. These were blended by the fiery genius of Burke, who took up the cause as for the punishment of a great malefactor, when unprejudiced study might have led him rather to champion a great ruler who was the victim of ignorance and passion. The charges, in the end, centred round the execution of Nuncomar, the treatment of Chait Singh, and the pecuniary exactions from the Begams of Oudh; to Burke these were “the damned and damnable proceedings of a judge in hell; and such a judge was Warren Hastings.” But within two years, while the slow course of the trial dragged on, illuminated only by the flashes of Burke’s gorgeous invective, the public interest in the whole question declined. That Hastings was not selfish, cruel, or unprincipled, was becoming apparent to all who could judge; and, what was more important, the policy of Fox’s party in regard to Bengal was losing interest as compared with their attitude towards the French Revolution. Tragic events in France, in England the King’s illness, the Regency Bill, and the Reflections of Burke, absorbed public attention. Days and weeks passed into years; yet the trial seemed no nearer a conclusion. If a temporary excitement was aroused when Cornwallis came forward to give evidence on behalf of his great predecessor, the proceedings were for the most part carried on with laborious prolixity and followed with unconcealed weariness. Before the trial was over, of the hundred and seventy peers who had sat on the opening day sixty were no longer living; and, when at last the decision was called for, only twenty-nine recorded a vote. On April 23, 1795, the judgment was delivered; and by a large majority Hastings was honourably acquitted.

The trial of Hastings belongs chiefly to the history of English parties. In India few knew or cared much about it; the magnificent services of the great ruler were fully recognised in the lands he had governed, and it was regarded as inconceivable that his merits should not be known in his own country. But the trial, and the mass of literature and caricature which gathered about it, afforded decisive evidence that the affairs of the East India Company had become a national concern. From time to time the public interest flickered; but henceforward it was never doubtful that the British Government and the British people regarded the settlements in India as a national possession in which the honour as well as the profit of the nation was involved. The East India Company was no longer a semi-independent association of commercial gentlemen, but a vigorous offshoot of the British power. Dundas, who was President of the Board of Control, became, largely through his Indian connexion, a personage of great political importance; and it was a significant mark of the progress of public opinion that in February, 1791, he carried, in the House of Commons, without a division, resolutions asserting that Tipu had broken his treaty with the English by the attack on Travancore, and that Cornwallis deserved approbation for his action in meeting it.

When the privileges of the Company expired in 1793, British interest was too deeply concerned in European affairs to enter fully into the important economic questions involved. Questions of free trade, restriction, monopoly, were argued perfunctorily; but it was something that they were raised. Dundas, however, was practically omnipotent; and petitions from many important trading centres were disregarded. For once, the Company did not appear before Parliament in forma pauperis: Cornwallis’ revenue reforms had made financial matters, for the moment, smooth. The Act of 1784 was therefore renewed, practically without alteration; and the Company’s privileges were continued for twenty years. One slight concession to free trade was made—the Company were to allot annually not less than three hundred tons of shipping for the trade of private persons.

In September, 1792, Pitt and Dundas pressed upon Sir John Shore, who had become a baronet in that year, and was now residing in England in rural privacy, the succession to the Governor-Generalship of India. He accepted it with great reluctance; that it was offered him was largely due to the influence of the noble character and wide Indian experience of his friend, Charles Grant, who for thirty years exercised in England an influence on Indian affairs as beneficial as it Was powerful. Burke protested that he was concerned in the crimes of Hastings; but the Court of Directors replied that their inducement for selecting him was that he had proved one of their ablest and most upright servants in India.

Sir John Shore held the post of Governor-General till the beginning of 1798, when he received an Irish peerage as Lord Teignmouth and returned to England. The five years of his rule were not, as regards action on the part of the British power, eventful; but the development of native politics during the period brought affairs to a crisis, which became acute immediately after he left the country. The chief factors in Indian politics, whose action extended over a vast area, were the Great Moghul himself, Shah Alam, who had been nominally restored by the Marathas in 1771 and had since then been in the power of Sindhia; the Niziim of Haidarabad, whose power, between the Marathas and Tipu, was becoming almost a negligible quantity, but who possessed a French- trained force which might prove dangerous to the British; the Marathas, that is the Poona regency, Sindhia, Holkar, and Bhonsla; and Tipu, the usurping Mohammadan Sultan of Mysore. The French in the peninsula were rendered practically impotent by the Revolution at home; the Dutch were almost equally affected by domestic politics, and their hold on Ceylon was far from secure. The Portuguese at Goa had endeavoured to keep out of native politics, for fear of endangering the traditional British alliance. They had been asked in 1786 to join the Marathas in military action, but had refused. Against Tipu they nourished a strong resentment, due to his forcible circumcision of thirty thousand native Catholics, of whom they were the natural protectors. In 1791 they had rounded off their own territories by the capture of Rachol and Piro, after an arrangement with the Raja of Sunda, by which he had given them all his rights in the territories of Ponda, Zambolim, and Panchamal. With these several Powers, during the administration of Sir John Shore, British interests were in the main concerned It may be added, as evidence of the extension of Oriental relations, that in 1792-4 Lord Macartney undertook a special embassy to China, which was productive only of a somewhat better acquaintance between the two Powers, and an increased knowledge on the part of British sailors of the navigation of Chinese waters; that a commercial treaty was made in 1792 with the Gurkhas, the Hindu race which had ruled Nepal for some fifteen years; and that, on their request for aid against the Chinese, Colonel Kirkpatrick was sent on a special mission to Nepal.

The domestic politics of India during the eventful period which synchronised with the administration of Cornwallis and Shore may best be grouped round the remarkable personality of Madhoji Rao Sindhia. In 1785 this able and adventurous chieftain was the most important personage in central India. He had seized Agra, secured the person of the Moghul, and forced him to declare the Peshwa, the nominal ruler of the Marathas (though strictly he too was but a deputy of the Raja of Satara), his vicegerent for his whole empire. But it was Sindhia who ruled the vicegerent himself, the Poona regency, and Nána Farnavis, the guardian and minister of the Peshwa, whose authority was now practically confined to the district immediately round Poona. Thus it came about that, in the words of a contemporary observer, all the legal sovereignty of India was consolidated in the hands of the Marathas. Sindhia’s military power was built up by Benoit de Boigne, a clever French officer, who had served also in the British and the Russian armies, and a Scotsman named Sangster. By their assistance a powerful army was organised, drilled, and armed on European models. A large train of artillery was provided; and regular infantry, unknown before to the Maratha system, was introduced. Of the immediate success of these changes there could be no question; but it was doubted, even at the time, whether the accompanying neglect of cavalry was not a fatal error. The Martha was, above all, a predatory horseman; swiftness was his strength; “his fortune was on the saddle of his horse.” When the other Maratha States followed the example of Sindhia, and developed the artillery and infantry arms at the expense of the horsemen, the decay of their military power began. They could not stand against European foot, and they threw away the advantages which celerity and knowledge of the country conferred. The greatest British general of the age, after full experience of Indian warfare, expressed his view that the changes introduced by Sindhia were a great mistake, and that the Marathas would have “been more formidable if they had never had a European or an infantry soldier in their service.” The opinion has been criticised, but the facts of the next few years prove its truth.

At the end of 1785 Sindhia was supreme in Hindustan. Not only were the Peshwa and his adviser impotent, and the dynasty of Nagpur inactive, but Tukaji Holkar, the military comrade of Madhoji Sindhia, was content to follow his progress to power with acquiescence. But within a year his authority was gravely threatened. The Mohammadan levies of the Moghul, which had been under Sindhia’s control, refused to disband: they were joined by the Rajput chieftains, Raja Partab Singh of Jaipur, the Rana of Udaipur, and Mahardja Bijai Singh of Jodhpur; and in May, 1787, Sindhia was defeated at Lálsot, about forty miles south of Jaipur. In vain did he appeal for aid to Nána Farnavis. Ghulim K4dir, an hereditary official at Delhi, overawed the Moghul, and joined the forces which were endeavouring to wrest Agra from Sindhia. But the forces of Mohammadan and Hindu opposition were disunited; they pursued their own interests; and Sindhia, with unbroken spirit, preserved his position in spite of constant defeats.

On June 18, 1788, he vanquished the Musalman leader, Ismail Beg, on the site of the famous city of Akbar, Fatehpur-Sikri, already deserted and now a magnificent ruin. But the victory was not followed up. The defeated Mohammadans marched to Delhi; Ghulám Kádir and Ismail Beg made themselves masters of the city, plundered the palaces, and blinded the Moghul Emperor, Shah Alam. The horrors of this Pathan occupation, in which no indignity was spared the imperial family, and dire privation was experienced by the whole city, brought inevitable retribution. Ismail Beg joined the Rajputs, and both determined to rescue the Moghul; the Poona regency gave the command of its troops to Tukaji Holkar; Ghulám Kádir was captured at Meerut and put to death; and Sindhia entered Delhi in triumph as the saviour of the rightful sovereign.

In 1790 the authority of Sindhia, as effective ruler of the strongest native power in India, seemed consolidated. He was still in theory only the deputy of a deputy’s deputy; but the Peshwa, with whom, as the head of the Marathas, the English always negotiated, was far inferior to him in power. Assumed humility only veiled Sindhia’s ambition. In 1790 and 1791 he crushed the Rajputs of Jaipur and Jodhpur and the restless Ismail Beg, who were hoping for help from the Afghans of Kabul. In June, 1792, he marched to Poona, and paid a ceremonial visit to the Peshwa, acting with an exaggerated affectation of subservience which deceived no one. This was the culmination of his career. Sir John Malcolm records it as a common saying in India that “Madhoji Sindhia made himself the sovereign of an empire by calling himself the headman of a village.” In spite of resistance from Holkar and Nána Fanavis, there can be little doubt that Sindhia, had he lived, would have established his power over the Marathas and throughout Hindustan, and either by alliance with Tipu or after his fall, would have become the most formidable rival of the English in the new movement of advance at the end of the eighteenth century. But on February 12, 1794, he died at Poona, not without suspicion of foul play. The city was famous for its tragedies, and this was not the last, though it may have been but the tragedy of inopportune conclusion. Daulat Rao Sindhia, a boy of fifteen, could not maintain the great position of his dead uncle ; and, after a few years of strangely confused intrigue, the English found that they had no more serious rival in all India than the Mohammadan ruler of Mysore.

The death of Madlioji Rio left the Marathas with no soldier­-statesman to combine their forces or their interests. Yet it seemed for the moment as if union had come. A war with the Nizám, on the unending subject of chauth (tribute of one-fourth), found all their forces fighting together under the leadership of the Peshwa. But it was for the last time. From this war, which began in 1795, the English, under the cautious direction of Sir John Shore, held aloof. The Governor­ General obeyed the Act of Parliament so scrupulously as to refuse assistance to the Nizam when he was attacked by the Mar 6th a host, and left it to the French corps of Raymond to oppose the only solid resistance to the allied armies, among whom the corps of Perron, lieutenant and successor to de Boigne, was conspicuous. On March 11, 1795, the Moghuls—as they were still fancifully called—were routed at Kurdla by the Marathas. The treaty which followed marked the highest point of the power of the Brahman oligarchy at Poona directed by Nána Farnavis. Within a few months it proved intolerable to the unhappy young Peshwa. He committed suicide on October 27, 1795; and Maratha affairs were again thrown into confusion. Intrigues and complications ensued; and it was long doubtful whether any coherent power would emerge. Daulat Rio Sindhia and the Nána played fast and loose with each other. The Nana at last recovered control by an arrangement with the Nizám (Treaty of Mahr, October, 1796); and at the end of the year, by the influence of Sindhia, Báji Ráo, son of the quondam Bombay candidate Rághoba, was accepted as Peshwa. But a little later the Nána was reduced to impotence ; and at the same time Tukaji Holkar died. Báji was practically the nominee of Sindhia; and, if Madhoji had been still alive, the State of Gwalior might have again ruled the Marathas.

From all these conflicts Sir John Shore had stood apart. The Company’s interests seemed to be again restricted to commercial concerns, justly and honourably administered. While Tipu’s power remained untouched, that of the Nizám, under his astute and unscrupulous minister the Azim-ul-Umará, and with a French force established under Raymond at Haidarabad, seemed to be re-established on a firm basis. In Oudh Sir John Shore established a new Wazir, Saddat Ali, and bound him, under dread of invasion from Afghanistan, to pay seventy-six lacs of rupees a year for the support of 13,000 British troops—an act of somewhat unusual firmness on the part of the Governor-General, for which he was threatened with impeachment. In the Carnatic, affairs were going from bad to worse. The growth of the Nawab’s debts placed him and his country in the hands of unprincipled European money­lenders. Lord Hobart, Governor of Madras, proposed to interfere by assuming control of the administration; but little came of the proposal beyond disagreement with the Governor-General. After the utmost allowance has been made for the difficulties of Sir John Shore’s position, enmeshed as he was by Acts of Parliament, a Board of Control, and a Court of Directors, no very great praise can be bestowed upon his conduct of affairs. When his term of office came to an end, the East India Company occupied in India a position hardly higher than when the Regulating Act first manifested England’s supreme concern in her Eastern settlements.

On April 26,1798, Shore was succeeded by a man of very different temper, the imperious, dignified, energetic, and determined Earl of Mornington, an Irish peer, the friend of Pitt and Wilberforce, of Grattan and Canning. Richard Colley Wellesley, before whom lay a great career, but one not so great as his brilliant qualities seemed to promise, was a figure at once commanding and picturesque in the society of the day. He was a distinguished classical scholar, a writer of impressive if somewhat magniloquent English, a singularly keen judge of political tendencies, a statesman unfettered by partisan or family prejudice. No man of equal ability, except Hastings, had upheld British rule in India; and Pitt, like his father, had a genius for the choice of great men to fill great posts. Before Wellesley arrived in India, he had shown how deeply he had studied the problems with which he would be confronted, and how trenchantly he was prepared to deal with them. Speaker Addington had said to him some while before, “You want a wider sphere; you are dying of the cramp.” The sphere was now open; and Wellesley determined that his powers should be cramped no more.

A paper written by the Duke of Wellington some years afterwards explains the situation with which his brother had to deal on his arrival in India. The French interest seemed to be paramount at the Courts of Tipu and the Nizám. A body of Frenchmen had already landed at Mangalore. Tipu was engaged in negotiations with France, had sent envoys to the Mauritius, and was said to have ridiculously affected Republicanism and called himself “citizen Tipu.” Now his more ambitious designs were ripe for execution. A strong French force was established at Haidarabad. The civil administration of the Carnatic had collapsed; and the revenue, even in time of peace, was inadequate to the demands upon it. The Raja of Berar was hostile; Poona was at the mercy of Sindhia; and Oudh was agitated and insecure. Cornwallis had aimed at securing a balance of power in the Deccan; and his method had consisted chiefly in doing nothing. This policy had been continued by Sir John Shore, with the result of reducing the power of the Peshwa almost to vanishing point. There was pressing danger from Mysore; and hardly less serious was that from Haidarabad.

Lord Mornington dealt first with the Nizam. “A French State in the peninsula,” to use Wellington’s phrase, was growing up in the territories of Haidarabad; and it was the Governor-General’s first aim to destroy it. The Nizám’s minister, the Azim-ul-Umara, was favourable to a British alliance, as a counterpoise to the Maratha power. In September, 1798, a treaty was drawn up, largely through his influence, by which the Nizam was to receive a British-officered force of Sepoys and to dismiss his French officers, disbanding their troops; further, the British Government was to mediate between the Nizám and the Peshwa, that is practically to protect the former against the Marathas. Mornington had able agents. One was a very clever young officer, John Malcolm; another was the British resident, Major James Achilles Kirkpatrick; a third was Colonel Roberts, who led the British troops to Haidarabad. Raymond was dead, his successor, General Perron, was unable to resist; and the disarma­ment of the French troops took place without a blow. Well might Dundas write that the policy and its execution were alike masterly and effectual. In October, 1800, a defensive alliance guaranteed the territories of the Nizám, and gave him the support of 10,000 of the Company’s troops. The alliance with the Nizam marked an important stage in the settlement of southern India. Lord Mornington had no idea of leaving the direction of policy to the local authorities; he made it clear that the direction of policy in Madras and Bombay, as well as in Bengal, was his peculiar province; and he reduced the Presidencies of the west and south to submission to his will. But the most impor­tant step in the settlement of the south was the conquest of Mysore.

In Tipu Mornington saw the chief danger to the peace of India. Mysore seemed a centre of anti-British intrigue which might culminate in alliances from Cape Comorin to Afghanistan. The public announcement of Tipu’s overtures to the French in Mauritius and the alliance offered by General Malartie determined the Governor-General to act at once. He sketched with masterly precision a course of action which should reduce the ruler of Mysore to impotence; and, when he heard of Bonaparte’s Egyptian expedition, he prepared for immediate war. The British alliance with the Sultan of Turkey did not affect this bigoted Mohammadan ; he counted on the French, and felt confident of success. On February 22, 1799, Mornington, who had himself come to Madras to direct operations, issued a declaration setting forth the occasions of the war; and the troops, under General Harris, were set in motion. The circumstances were very different from those of Cornwallis’ campaigns. British officers now knew the ground; the commissariat was admirably organised; the alliance of the Nizam and the Peshwa was secured; and the object of the war was “single, distinct, and definite.”

On March 5 the British troops entered Mysore; and after a series of defeats, Tipu was unable to prevent the investment of Seringapatam. On April 4 the town was carried by assault; and Tipu fell in the thick of the fight. When the Sultan was killed, the French troops fired a few volleys but made no further resistance. The British success was complete; and the subsequent settlement of the country was just and effective. By the Muslims Tipu was regarded as a hero and a martyr. It had been his delight to enforce on bis subjects and his vanquished foes “the honour of Islam”; and he had at first appealed to Selim III, as the head of the Muslim world, to protect him. But he was a stem and savage ruler; and the subject Hindus rejoiced at their deliverance from Mohammadan tyranny. No action of Mornington’s was more politic than the restoration of the race of the Hindu Rajas from whom Haidar had withdrawn even the appearance of power. The State was restricted but compact; and prosperity rapidly returned. “The country is becoming a garden,” said Arthur Wellesley in 1801; and the Government, over which the British retained a light but effective control, remained a firm ally of the East India Company. Part of the territory previously ruled by Tipu was offered to the Marathas; on their refusal, the annexed provinces were divided between the English and the Nizám. The Company secured an uninterrupted frontier from the east to the west of the peninsula, as well as the sea-coast and the forts commanding the passes over the hills into the Mysore kingdom. As a military, financial, and pacificatory settlement, the conquest of Mysore was the most brilliant success of the British power since the days of Clive. It left no serious opponent of British influence in the whole peninsula save the scattered and disunited confederacy of the Marathas.

The Government at home recognised the greatness of the achievement. Honours were distributed with unusual liberality; but Lord Mornington was not pleased to find that he was himself only to be a marquess in the peerage of Ireland as Marquess Wellesley; he called the distinction a “double-gilt potato.” But his annoyance led to no relaxation of his vigorous activity. He turned at once to review the whole course of Indian politics. The States already tributary were first dealt with, then the external powers. The most pressing questions were those connected with the Carnatic. The system established there, to adopt the language of Wellington in 1806, “not only tended to the oppression of the inhabitants of the country, to the impoverishment of the Nawab, and to the destruction of the revenues of the Carnatic, but was carried into execution by the Company’s civil and military servants, and by British subjects.” By a series of treaties, the Nawáb, while left free in his internal government, had been placed under control in his external relations; he was shackled by guaranteed debts to the Company and unrecognised loans from private persons; his whole position was insecure, discreditable, and dishonest. At Seringapatam were discovered letters to Haidar Ali and Tipu, which proved that the Nawabs had been eager to extinguish their liabilities by joining with Mysore in shaking off the British yoke; and a careful enquiry established the fact of this connexion. The death of the Nawab, Mohammad Ali, proved convenient for a new settlement. On July 31, 1801, Azim-ud-daulah was set up as Nawáb with an income of one-fifth of the net revenues; the debts were provided for; and the administration, civil and military, was handed over to the Company’s officers.

Similar arrangements were made in Surat and Tanjore. Surat was at the time one of the greatest ports in India, exceeding Bombay in importance. The British community in Surat was struggling, as usual, for privileges or rights; and the native officials strove to retain the power of unlimited exaction. Wellesley stepped in on a vacancy in the sovereign power, and executed with the new ruler an arrangement like that with the Carnatic. British interests were thus secured from Gujarat to Goa. In the south, the State of Tanjore came into a similar connexion with the Company. Its Rsja, Sarboji, who had been educated by the famous Danish missionary, Schwarz, was glad to yield, in confidence and honour, the entire civil and military administration of his country to the Company’s officers.

In Oudh a similar arrangement put an end to other difficulties. There was the perpetual danger of the Dodb frontier, of Rohilkhand, of encroaching Marsthas, Sikhs, and Afghans. Even while he was planning the war against Tipu, Wellesley was dealing with Oudh. On this occasion he received support from home. Dundas was alarmed by the prospect of an invasion by the Afghan leader, Zamán Shah, and urged alliance with Sikhs and Rajputs, and even with Marathas, in order to protect Oudh and Bengal. Wellesley saw that Oudh, in its present state, was indefensible. The Nawab Wazir’s troops were no better than an armed rabble; and the administration, infected by corrupt officials and European money-lenders, was hopelessly inept. Wellesley determined to exclude every European except the Company’s officials, and to disband the native force. The Nawáb threatened to resign; he was advised to surrender the administration to the Company, but refused. In 1801 the Governor-General sent his brother, Henry Wellesley (afterwards Lord Cowley) to Lucknow, and was prepared to follow himself, when the Nawáb ceded, in perpetuity and in full sovereignty, a large frontier district, sufficient to protect his territory and to defray the expense of maintaining a guard of British troops. The treaty of 1801 was severely criticised at home as unauthorised and unjust; and the appointment of Henry Wellesley to preside over a provisional govern­ment of the ceded district was attacked as a flagrant “job.” The Directors were alienated from their Governor-General by this apparent infringement of their right of patronage as well as by his “forward policy.” To later students the wonder is that, when Wellesley annexed part of Oudh, he did not annex the whole.

The policy of “subsidiary” alliances (that is, alliances involving the support of British troops paid for by the receiver of such support), culminated in Wellesley’s dealings with the Marathas. The decadence of that disorderly confederacy offered an opportunity and a justification for intervention. He determined to act boldly and decisively. His action was bold, but it was not decisive. Perhaps he plucked the fruit too soon; more probably it was the home authorities who prevented the satisfactory completion of a policy which could only succeed if pressed to a conclusion. The factors in the problem were the Peshwa, the aged Nina Farnavis, now again chief minister at Poona, the families of Sindhia, Bhonsla, and Holkar. Among their constantly changing relations Wellesley moved with confidence if not with security. He turned first to the Peshwa, Báji Ráo; and, as he turned, the Nina, who had ever regarded the English with jealousy and alarm, expired. An opponent was gone; but the Maratha Government was left without a rudder. “With him,” wrote the British resident, “has departed all the wisdom and moderation of their Government.”

Baji now became a mere shuttlecock between the two great houses of Sindhia and Holkar. Daulat Riio Sindhia was busy fighting with his father’s widows; Jaswant Rao Holkar, with his brothers. At last, on October 25, 1802, Holkar defeated the Peshwa and Sindhia under the walls of Poona, and set up a pretender in the Peshwa’s place. In December, Baji, in safety at Bassein, close to Bombay, agreed to make no treaties save with British consent, and to receive a large British force, for which he assigned districts to provide the payment. The Treaty of Bassein made the Peshwa, hitherto regarded by the Company as the head of the Maratha confederacy, little better than a servant in their hands. The arrangement was severely criticised at home. Castlereagh, now President of the Board of Control, thought it was certain to involve us in further complications; the Directors deprecated all action which could lead to war. Wellesley, in defending his policy, surveyed the whole of the Company’s relations. The first danger he foresaw was from France. Perron had, with Sindhia’s aid, established a great territorial dominion, embracing the Panjab, Agra, Delhi, and a large portion of the Doab, nearly from the left bank of the Indus to the Jumna and the Ganges. It was the most vulnerable part of our north-west frontier; and the name of the unhappy Moghul, Shah Alam, could always be used to rally forces against us. So long as the Peshwa was bound to make war and peace only by the Company’s advice, there was some security for peace in India—such was the view of Arthur Wellesley, the able soldier who had already distinguished himself in Mysore. But the real question was of the excellence of the “ subsidiary ” system itself; in truth it could not be permanent, and must end in withdrawal or annexation.

On May 13, 1803, Baji Rao re-entered Poona as Peshwa, with General Arthur Wellesley as his guard. On August 3 war broke out with Sindhia; he' had not been long in seeing that his independence would be threatened next. The greatest of Lord Wellesley’s struggles began. He planned at once to destroy the French force, to conquer the whole of the land between the Ganges and the Jumna, to seize Delhi and Agra, and to extend his control from Katak to Bharoch. At the outset, British arms were successful over a large part of the field. In 1799 Baji had given a lease of all the Peshwa’s rights in Gujarat to Govind Rao ; but Kanhoji Gaekwdr, supported by his Arab guard, had held the capital, Baroda. Wellesley saw the importance of securing this commercial and military post; and the British troops took it by storm. In April, 1805, a treaty established a satisfactory settlement. Katak was still more easily secured. In Hindustan and the Deccau the work was much more serious.

In the Deccan Arthur Wellesley was in command. He had to meet both Sindhia and Bhonsla. He took Ahmadnagar and Aurangabad, and on September 23,1803, fought the famous battle of Assaye. An infantry attack was followed by a cavalry charge; and Sindhia’s French troops, as well as his own newly-organised infantry, were put to flight. Two months later Bhonsla was defeated at Argaon; and on December 14 the capture of Gawilgarh practically ended the war with the Raja of Berar. Bhonsla on December 17,1803, signed the Treaty of Deogáon, agreeing to dismiss all foreigners whose countries were at war with England, to receive a resident, and to give up Katak. In Hindustan General Lake gained some brilliant successes. Perron gave up his post with Sindhia; Bourquin was defeated outside Delhi; and the aged Shah Alam was raised again to semi-independent power. Agra was taken; and Sindhia’s army, after hard fighting, was scattered to the winds at Laswari. The Treaty of Surji Arjangaon took from Sindhia all the land between the Jumna and the Ganges, and all north of Jaipur, Jodhpur, and Gohad.

A difficult point was the rock fortress of Gwalior, which Hastings had long ago called the key of Hindustan, and which had been seized by Sindhia from the Raja of Gohad. Sindhia was anxious to retain it; but Lord Wellesley demanded its surrender, in order that the Company might restore it to their faithful ally, the Raja of Gohad. Arthur Wellesley said he would sacrifice it and every other frontier town ten times over “to preserve our credit for scrupulous good faith”; and John Malcolm supported him strongly. But Lord Wellesley replied, “Major Malcolm’s business is to obey my orders and enforce my instructions; I will look after the public interest”; and Gwalior was surrendered. Soon afterwards Sindhia accepted a modified “subsidiary” treaty; but in 1805 he regained the territory of Gohad and the fort of Gwalior. Three out of the four chief Maratha States were now subdued; and there was no French centre of influence left in India. But there was still a power to reckon with, more dangerous and astute than any other.

Jaswant Ráo Holkar had emerged from a confused series of battles and intrigues as the strongest member of the family of Tukaji, of whom he was an illegitimate son; and he soon made himself the ruler of the territory which had been so wisely administered by his father and by the great Ahalya Bái. He and Sindhia in turn sacked each other’s capitals; and it was the capture of Poona by his troops in 1802 which led to the epoch-making Treaty of Bassein. During the recent war he had stood aloof; now he seemed suddenly to perceive his danger, and prepared for war. Illusory negotiations were for a time earned on; but on April 16, 1804, the Governor-General gave orders to Lake, the commander-in-chief, and to Major-General Arthur Wellesley, to commence hostile operations. Lake was to move from Delhi; Colonel Murray, starting from Gujarat, was to reduce Holkar’s possessions in Malwa. Rampura was taken on May 16; but an advance by Colonel Monson into Malwa met with utter disaster. He had hoped to meet Murray, but the latter had turned back; and, when Monson, misled by the treacherous advice of Sindhia’s general, nominally his ally, moved down the Mukandwara pass into the open country towards the Chambal river, he heard that Murray could not join him. He therefore determined to retreat, leaving Lucan with the cavalry to protect his rear. Lucan was surprised, and his force cut to pieces, by Holkar, who thereupon pursued Monson, and attacked him on all sides. The retreat became a disorderly flight; and Zalim Singh, Regent of Kota, refused to allow the British forces to find shelter within his city. A demoralised rabble, the only remains of the five battalions of infantry, 4000 horse, and artillery, which had formed the force at the outset, eventually found refuge within the fort of Agra.

The defeat of Monson was a blow in northern India which recalled the disasters of Baillie and Braithwaite in the south. Native ballad­mongers made the most of it; and native Princes again took courage to resist the mighty foreigner. Holkar gathered a large army, and entered Hindustan as a conqueror; but he remained there only seven months. Murray seized his capital, Indore. Laying siege to Delhi, Holkar was kept at bay by a mere handful of men, and eventually withdrew southward, contenting himself with ravaging the Doab. Of the horrors of native raids contemporary observers have left vivid pictures. One is that of Colonel James Tod, British representative among the Rajputs, who says, “wherever the Marathas encamped, annihilation was ensured; and twenty-four hours sufficed to give to the most flourishing spot the aspect of a desert.” He spoke from his own observation; and Holkar was the most savage freebooter of his time. But his career was cut short by General Frazer, who won a brilliant victory at Dig on Nov. 12, 1804; and Holkar's cavalry was cut up three days later by Lake at Farrukhabad. On December 24 Dig, in the Bharatpur country, fell before the British arms; and the Raja of Bharatpur, after keeping Lake at bay for many months, at last consented to a treaty.

It was at this point, when success was within his grasp, that Wellesley’s government came to an end. For this abrupt conclusion there were other causes besides Monson’s defeat. The Directors had viewed with increasing alarm the expansion of their territory under the forward policy of their brilliant Governor-General. They were quite unprepared to undertake Imperial responsibilities. Lord Wellesley saw that some one government must weld the different nations and races of the vast peninsula into a single whole; the Directors, of whom Charles Grant was an able spokesman, regarded the idea as a scheme of ambition and aggrandisement, contrary to the Act of 1784, and in principle wholly unjustifiable. But it was not only the rapid advance of empire, involving what seemed like an attempt to rival in India the aggressions of Napoleon in Europe, against which the Directors protested. At every point of administration Wellesley had matured plans for improvement. Some of them he had carried into effect; others waited for sanction; and the sanction was refused. He reconstituted the chief civil and criminal Courts, the Sadr Diwani Adalat and the Nizamat Adálat, no longer retaining for the Governor-General in Council those judicial duties which it was impossible for him, in the pressure of other business, adequately to perform. He planned a reorganisation of the whole system of govern­ment. The scheme exists in manuscript, but it never approached acceptance. The Governor-General proposed that there should in future be only two divisions of British India—Bengal, and Madras with Bombay and Ceylon. The Governor-General was to be over both, with a Council and a Vice-President for each. In view of the Company’s growing responsibilities, it was not surprising that such a scheme failed to obtain consideration.

Closer to the Governor-General’s heart was the training of the Company’s civil servants. The ignorance of the local officials led too often, said Wellesley, to sloth, indolence, and low debauchery. The young men who were sent out had no previous training; and the training they received in India was inadequate to enable them successfully to act as judges, financiers, administrators, and rulers. Wellesley determined to supply the training by a college to be erected at Fort William, for which he planned the government, discipline, and course of study. His foundation received the warm approval of Warren Hastings, who had had a similar scheme in mind thirty-five years before; but the Directors took alarm, and the college speedily disappeared.

In finance Wellesley made great advances; the commercial classes acquired new confidence from his firm rule; and public credit became much more secure. In regard to the inevitable breakdown of the Com­pany's monopoly, Wellesley was prepared to make advances towards free trade, and Dundas at home was ready to support his action; but the Directors raised shrill cries of alarm. Not only would their trade be destroyed, but England would be depopulated. “Free trade,” they asserted, “cannot be permitted without being followed by a general intercourse, nor that without hazard to our political power in the East.” Wellesley, like his friend Pitt, knew The Wealth of Nations too well to take such a view. He suggested the employment of ships built in India, and a considerable increase of freedom for private trade. In a letter to the Court of Directors, dated September 20, 1800, he foretold a vast expansion of trade. This trade (he said) must, if possible, be kept in British hands; and this could best be done by giving liberty to British merchants to provide their own tonnage as they needed it, hiring ships under regulations framed by the Company. In this attempt to introduce free trade, Wellesley was warmly supported not only by the mercantile interest in England, but by Castlereagh and Dundas; the Company’s opposition was, however, determined. Charles Grant observed that the Governor-General’s letter, advocating the enlargement of private trade, arrived when his educational scheme was being considered; and this coincidence wrecked them both. “ It would lead,” said Grant, “to the supersession of the Company, the opening of trade, and ultimately the endangering of our Indian Empire.” Grant's opposition was particularly unfortunate for Lord Wellesley, as in May, 1804, he was made Deputy Chairman of the Court of Directors, and next year Chairman; he became, said those who knew, not merely a Director but the Direction.

There was, unfortunately, another bone of contention between the Governor-General and his masters. As Sir John Macpherson admitted, “merit and capacity to serve” were the only qualifications which he considered in the appointments he made; but the Directors wished to have more than a finger in the pie, and cancelled the appointments of eminent men with something like personal resentment. The records of the India Office are full of denunciations and criticisms. Wellesley had long felt the irksomeness of his position; and it was only by repeated requests from the Government that he was induced to remain. When, early in 1805, the Court censured his appointments, his expenditure, his dis­obedience to their orders, he resolved to abandon his post; and on August 15 he sailed for England, with his work still incomplete, but having accomplished more than any of his predecessors, and established throughout India the ascendancy of the British power.

The one superior power left in India was such only in name ; but it had been an important part of Wellesley’s policy to preserve and utilise this nominal superiority. The Moghul, Shah Alam, by an agreement made early in 1805, was established at Delhi under British protection, with a considerable payment and provision for his dignity. The object of this was as little understood in England as Wellesley’s general policy of “subsidiary” alliances. Even Pitt is reported by Castlereagh to have said that the Governor-General had acted most imprudently and illegally; and it was on this understanding, and with the object of reversing all that could be reversed, that Lord Cornwallis again accepted the Governor-Generalship. He entered on his duties on July 30,1805. He immediately began negotiations with Holkar with the view of concluding peace. His view was that the line of the Jumna should be taken as a military frontier, that all the country west of that line should be given up; and that the territories south and west of Delhi should be granted to the smaller Rajas, who were to be pledged to relinquish all claims to British aid. Either they would unite against Sindhia, or he would have enough to do to reduce them. The British rule was to depend, not on its own power, but on the internecine strife of its rivals. So much was clearly sketched; and something, in spite of the bitter opposition of Lord Lake, was accomplished, when Cornwallis died on October 5, having held office little more than two months.

Sir George Hilaro Barlow, a civil servant of the Company, senior member of the Council, succeeded provisionally to the post, and was immediately confirmed in it by the Court of Directors. A conscientious and strong-minded man, Sir George Barlow felt himself bound to carry out the known wishes of the Directors, and to endure the obloquy which was sure to fall upon him for repudiation of honourable obligations. The treaty made with Sindhia meant the abandoning of many allies, and the practical submission of the Rajput chieftains to his attacks. Holkar was pursued by Lord Lake across the Sutlej into the territory of the great Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh. The attitude of the Sikhs was long undecided; but early in 1806 Ranjit Singh came over decidedly to the British side. A series of treaties left a number of minor chieftains to the vengeance of Holkar, and allowed him to recover the greater part of his lost dominions. Misled perhaps by the fears disseminated by returned civil and military servants, who told them that he was now the only strong power in India, and that they must court his friendship, the Board of Control sanctioned a treaty by which Holkar, who had taken refuge in the Pan j Ab in his disorderly flight before the British army, was permitted to return to his dominions, and was estab­lished in a greater position than he had ever held before. Moreover, in April, 1809, a treaty was made with Ranjit Singh by which the Sikh power was restricted to the north of the Sutlej. But Jaipur was abandoned; and the Sikhs were left free to subdue the districts of Multan, Kashmir, Peshawar, and the Derajat.

The administration of Sir George Barlow marked the practical abandonment of central India to rapine and anarchy. Udaipur was the prey of savage pretenders to the hand of its Raja’s daughter, who was at last driven to suicide to save her father from entire subjugation. The peace which it was hoped the British power could uphold was lost; and the influence of the Company was maintained only at the Courts of Haidarabad and Poona. Anxious to please the Directors, Sir George Barlow failed to satisfy the British Government. Consequently, although he had been practically promised the Governor-Generalship, he was superseded by the Crown under the power given by the Act of 1784; and Lord Minto, who had for some time held office at the Board of Control, was appointed in his place. Lord Minto assumed the government at Calcutta on July 3, 1807. The disagreement between the Company and public feeling was evident also in the fact that, while the Court of Proprietors in 1806 strongly condemned Lord Wellesley’s policy, the attempts to impeach or to censure him in Parliament were decisively rejected.

The condition of India when Lord Minto arrived was highly disturbed, not only through the disastrous policy of leaving the native States to devour one another, and the disorder in Bundelkhand, but also by a new and most alarming symptom of the insecurity of the British power. This was the mutiny of the Madras sepoys at Vellore, in which a large number of British officers and men were slain. The cause was mainly national, or racial; and the sons of Tipu Sultan were at least nominally its leaders. Recent military regulations, utterly unsuited to native troops, had caused bitter resentment among the soldiers; and by some it was supposed that there was an intention to convert them to Christianity, a suspicion which the ostentatious disregard of that religion by the officials at Madras might have served to discredit. Lord William Bentinck, the Governor, who was in no way to blame, was removed from his office, and was replaced by Sir George Barlow, one of whose first duties was to deal with a serious mutiny among the European officers in the Madras army. Efforts to reduce expenditure had led to the cutting off of several unsatisfactory methods of raising money; and investigations, courts-martial, orders of suspension and dismissal, led to an open outburst against the Government, which threatened civil war. In these difficult circumstances, Sir George Barlow showed that he possessed distinguished courage and determination. Aware that a large proportion of the Company’s troops in the south were banded together to secure the redress of grievances, he suppressed the mutiny by calling the sepoys to the aid of the Government. At Seringapatam this actually led to a conflict between the King’s troops and the Company’s; but eventually peace was secured by concessions which accompanied the restoration of authority.

Lord Minto’s term of office was marked by the temporary occupation of Goa, by an abortive expedition to Macao in 1809—a consequence of Napoleon’s invasion of Portugal—by the capture in 1810 of the Île de France (Mauritius), and by the occupation of Java in 1811, by which time every position held by France or her dependencies in the East, had passed into English hands. During this period we should also note the beginning, or at least the extension, of a policy, of which slight indications had been given both by Warren Hastings and by Wellesley, of entering into friendly relations with the great States outside the limits of direct British influence. Mountstuart Elphinstone led a mission to the Amir of Afghanistan, who promised to prevent any attack on India through his territory; but the Amir, Shah Sujah, was himself dethroned immediately afterwards, so that nothing came of the mission. Sir John Malcolm, who so early as 1803 had been called “Lord Wellesley’s factotum and the greatest man in Calcutta,” and whom Wellesley had sent in 1799 to Teheran, went in 1807 on a mission to the Persian Gulf, and in 1810 again visited the Persian sovereign and obtained an assurance of friendship. In 1809 Charles Metcalfe negotiated an alliance with Ran jit Singh, which brought British power to the banks of the Sutlej. Each of these three distinguished public servants had been trained in the school of Wellesley; and, if the results of their embassies were not great, they served at least to emphasise the wide interests of the British power. The treaty with Persia, which was not definitely completed till 1814, is notable as show­ing that the British Government was already apprehensive of Russian influence in the East, the security of Persia being guaranteed against any attack from that quarter.

The Governor-Generals who succeeded Wellesley possessed none of his fire, even if they had his opportunities; and the work of Lord Minto was rather one of consolidation than of fresh advance. Legal changes, some attempts to redress the errors of the Permanent Settlement of Bengal, and to reform the rural system of the Madras Presidency (a great public service for ever associated with the name of Sir Thomas Munro), and a vigorous effort to organise a police force and local criminal judicature, marked the period which ended in 1813. In 1814 a new advance was made by the Earl of Moira (afterwards Marquis of Hastings), whom the Prince Regent, his personal friend, sent out to replace Lord Minto. The most important work of Hastings and his successor belongs to a later time; it was concerned mainly with the destruction of the Pindaris, the armed freebooters of central India, and with the final suppression of the Maratha power at Poona. Of earlier date, and significant as marking the direction in which British enterprise was advancing, was the war against the Gurkhas of Nepal (1814-6). This expedition was at first unsuccessful, largely through the unpopularity and rigour of the officers, whom the troops refused to follow. Things went better when the command was taken over by Ochterlony, who captured many hill forts, advanced into the valley of Khatmandu, and from Makwanpur might have pressed on to the capital itself. But Hastings was content with a treaty which restricted the Gurkhas in their power over Sikkim, and, after a renewal of the war in 1816, compelled them to cede a large tract of territory along the outer ranges of the Himalayas.

In 1813, after prolonged debate, the Charter of the Company was renewed for twenty years. Castlereagh, who introduced the Bill into the Commons, proposed to establish free trade, both import and export, for all British ships not above four hundred tons. This liberal approach towards complete freedom was hotly contested. The Company brought up some of its most distinguished servants to plead for its privileges. Warren Hastings, the Marquess Wellesley, Lord Teignmouth (Shore), Sir John Malcolm, Charles Grant, spoke, but spoke in vain. The renewal of the Charter in 1813 was, in fact, a decisive mark of the extended interest which England as a whole was beginning to assert in Indian affairs. A vast number of pamphlets, papers, reports, protestations of every kind, manifest the public concern. The settle­ment of the trade question was complicated by a passionate religious controversy. A number of timid traders, and at least as many persons of narrow political views, displayed great alarm as to the prospects of Christian missions in India. Wilberforce, who powerfully supported the attempt to win freedom for Englishmen to teach their own religion, declared definitely “ that the missionaries should be clearly understood to be armed with no authority, furnished with no commission, from the governing power of the country.” The distinction was emphasised by Lord Wellesley, who had definitely asserted the Christianity of the Government when he was in India, and strongly favoured the increase of the Church establishment; while able civil servants like Malcolm warmly urged a considerable extension of the educational work of the Company. Several missions had already been started; some progress had been made, and further advance was retarded only by the hesitation of the Government to permit the appointment of a bishop.

Somewhat apart from the general progress of the British power during the period under survey stands the history of Ceylon. At the beginning of 1795 the island, long held by the Dutch, was seized by an expedition from Madras; and on February 16 the Dutch Government surrendered its authority to Colonel Stuart and Captain Gardner, R.N. The end of the severe and unsympathetic Dutch rule was universally welcomed in Ceylon. In spite of the most careful regulations for preserving the rights of the Dutch religious establishment, it soon disappeared; and no other influence, except in the region of law, remained to testify to their long occupation. During 1797 there were proposals for the retrocession of Ceylon to the Batavian Republic; and some injudicious action on the part of the representative of the Madras Presidency, under which the island was placed, led to a revolt, which caused Pitt to see the wisdom of placing it directly under the Crown. In October, 1798, Frederick North became first Governor. Lord Wellesley regarded Ceylon as an important part of the Indian Empire, essential to its defence; and he proposed that it should be definitely placed under the control of the Governor-General. While the English held the coast, the mountain kingdom of Kandy remained independent; and with its ruler North engaged in negotiations which bore the appearance of a discreditable intrigue. In 1803 British troops took possession of Kandy, but the bulk of the force was soon withdrawn, whereupon the remainder were massacred by the natives. It was not till 1815 that satisfaction for this act was obtained. The King of Kandy for twelve years ruled without interference as a successful and savage tyrant. At length an outrage committed on British subjects led to a declaration of war on January 16, 1815. The Governor, General Brownrigg, acted against the advice of his Council, but was completely successful; and on March 2, 1816, the tyrant was deposed. In 1817 an insurrection broke out, but it was speedily suppressed; and the island has since then remained tranquil under the British Crown.

The echoes of the great European conflict were heard in India only like the sound of distant thunder. But there was one occasion on which the East sent its aid to repel in a far distant land the encroachments of the West. At the end of December, 1800, an expedition started from Bombay to intervene in the Egyptian campaign. It consisted of 6400 British and native troops, commanded by Sir David Baird. The force landed at Kosseir on June 8,1801, whence, after a march of 140 miles across the desert, it reached Cairo on August 10. From Cairo it marched with the rest of the British army to Alexandria; and three weeks later the French capitulated.

This expedition, insignificant as were its immediate results, is remarkable as illustrating the position which British rule in India had, through the struggles of the years 1785-1815, definitely attained. The innumerable diaries, memoirs, letters of travellers, and state papers, in which the inner social history of this period may laboriously be read, leave an impression of narrow commercial views, of personal interests selfishly pursued, of a lack of sympathy with other races, of difficulties of education and environment awkwardly surmounted, of petty aims and trivial incidents. But to conclude that this was all would be to take a very superficial view. The Governors who from time to time guided the policy of the Company in India, much though they differed in width of view, in knowledge, in statesmanship, were yet, every one of them, inspired with an earnest desire for righteousness and justice in their rule. The experiment of governing millions of Asiatics in accordance with the dictates of Western ideas was being tried, amid many difficulties, but with unflinching determination. The greatest of the Governors felt the stupendous nature of their task. They did not undertake it lightly, whether it was Cornwallis in his revenue and police reforms, or Wellesley in his alliances and his wars. It was an ideal not of conquest but of empire whceh they set forth ; and from that ideal the deep thought of moral responsibility was never absent. They had their reward in the permanence of their work. It is this that makes the growth of British power in the East during the thirty years that followed the rule of Warren Hastings a unique phenomenon in the history of the Napoleonic age.

II

THE COLONIES (1783-1815).

Although the French War, which closed with the Battle of Waterloo, was the last episode in the long contest for colonial and commercial pre-eminence, its colonial character was less apparent than in the case of earlier wars. The British colonial empire of the time was of a singularly amorphous structure—in the East, vast and wealthy territories under the ill-defined authority of a trading company, moving, under irresistible impulses, in a direction from which its natural instinct recoiled; in the West, a conquered French possession, some island colonies hitherto unprogressive, and a wilderness sparsely peopled by “United Empire Loyalists.” A convict colony in the southern seas could not arouse enthusiasm; and the West Indian Islands alone seemed to realise the idea of the old colonial system. But, such as they were, the colonies and the nascent Indian Empire were alike protected by the dominant sea-power of Great Britain. Thus it came about that, though the French Revo­lution and the personality of Napoleon dominate the general history of the period, there were distant regions, of great future importance, which scarcely felt their influence.

In Australia and in Canada the seed, sown in dishonour or in carelessness, of a self-governing colonial empire was struggling into life. That this empire was due to no conscious aims of British statesmen is manifest. The declaration of American independence cast its shadow over the years which followed. When, in 1793, Great Britain was involved in war with France, colonies became pawns in the game; but even then there was no deliberate aim to secure colonial ascendancy by means of sea-power. The conquered West Indian Islands were, with the exception of Trinidad, readily restored at the Peace of Amiens. The ultimate decision to retain Cape Colony and Mauritius was based on military, not colonial, considerations. At the final peace British statesmen felt no heartburnings in restoring to Holland that “other India,” Java; and, in justifying the action of the Government with regard to the French colonies, Lord Castlereagh deliberately maintained that it was not the interest of England to make France a mere military, instead of a commercial, nation. The final outcome of the great war was the colonial ascendancy of Great Britain; but such was not the conscious aim of those who carried through the struggle.

It would be easy to imagine that the foundation of New South Wales, almost immediately after the loss of the American colonies, was intended to call a new colonial empire into existence to take the place of the old; but, in point of fact, the first movers in the matter were careful to explain that they intended no repetition of the past. In view of the general disapproval of emigration, they laboured to refute the notion that their project would in any way depopulate the parent State. The settlers of New South Wales (they asserted) would principally be collected from the Friendly Islands and China; and only a few skilled workmen, with the ships’ crews, would be required from England. James Maria Matra, who was, next to Sir Joseph Banks, chief author of the proposal, while advocating the colony as an asylum for the American loyalists, still held that the bulk of the immigrants might come from China. Part of New South Wales lay in the same latitude as the Spice Islands; and spices and other tropical or semi-tropical products would be the main wealth of the colony. The whole expense to the British Govern­ment need not exceed £3,000. Lord Sydney, the Home Secretary, whose department had at the time the control of colonial affairs, saw no visions of a Greater Britain in the southern seas; but he was seriously exercised over the question how to dispose of the convicts who were crowding the English prisons, and he recognised in the proposal a way of escape. From the time of George I, a regular system of transportation to the American colonies had been in force; and it was necessary to find a substitute for this outlet. In 1784 an Act of Parliament was therefore passed enabling the Government, by an Order in Council, to indicate places to which convicts might be transported; and in 1786 “the eastern coast of New South Wales” was declared to be such a place.

The new colony extended, on paper, from Cape York, 10° 37' south latitude, to South Cape, 43° 39' south latitude, and inland as far as 135° east longitude. It included all the islands adjacent in the Pacific Ocean within the aforesaid latitudes. These spacious limits were doubt­less fixed to forestall occupation by other Powers. The Governor’s commission might follow the sonorous precedents of more hopeful times; but there is no reason to suppose that the Government had in view more than a mere convict colony. Even so, it was started with amazing recklessness. The coast of New South Wales was practically unknown. The projectors were ignorant of the physical conditions, which subse­quently proved so great a hindrance to agriculture. The system under which transportation to the American colonies had taken place had secured the efficiency of convict labour; but it was a wholly different matter in Australia, where no attempt was made to select those convicts who were most suitable for agriculture, and skilled overseers were not provided. The wonder is, not that the colonists suffered hardships and want for several years, but that New South Wales ever successfully emerged from its period of beginnings.

For this result the credit is mainly due to its first governor, Captain Phillip. His appointment evoked surprise from Lord Howe, First Lord of the Admiralty; but he proved himself eminently the right man for the place. The arrangements made for the voyage were by no means adequate, but they would have been far more defective without Phillip’s ceaseless exertions. The first fleet, with 756 convicts on board, started on May 13, 1787, and arrived at Botany Bay on January 18, 1788. Finding Botany Bay unsuitable lor settlement, Phillip proceeded to examine Port Jackson, where he found “the finest harbour in the world”; and he selected Sydney as the site of the new colony. Owing to the size of the trees, the labour of clearing the ground proved almost too severe for undisciplined convict labour. In this state of things, Phillip recog­nised the necessity of a regular supply of provisions for four or five years. The home authorities took little interest in the emigrants; and, when to this difficulty was added the loss of ships with stores, famine itself came perilously close. Other troubles beset the sorely-tried Governor. Major Ross, who commanded the Marines, was a continual thorn in his side. The dignity of the service forbade that officers should hold any intercourse with the convicts when not directly compelled. A further cause of anxiety arose from the disproportion of the sexes in the colony. The first intention had been that the convicts should receive wives from the South Sea Islands; and, even when this idea was abandoned, the proportion of women to men sent out in the years during which the system of transportation prevailed was seldom higher than one in three, and often much lower. The first settlement might well have consisted only of able-bodied men who might have received wives after carrying out the preliminary work; in the course actually adopted there was neither method nor convenience.

Nevertheless, through all his trials, Phillip maintained his faith in the future of the country. He never wavered in the belief that the colony would “prove the most valuable acquisition Great Britain ever made,” although he recognised that no country offered less assistance to the first settlers, or “could be more disadvantageous placed with respect to support from the mother-country, on which for a few years we must entirely depend.” Before starting he had written: “as I would not wish convicts to lay the foundation of an Empire, I think they should ever remain separated from the garrison and other settlers that may come from Europe.” Experience now proved that fifty farmers sent out with their families would do more in one year to render the colony self-dependent than a thousand convicts. The “ assignment ” system, under which alone convict labour could be made economically profitable, was suggested by Phillip. Free emigrants should have the labour of a certain number of convicts for two or three years, after which they should be able to support themselves, and pay, in return for convict labour, the cost of the passage out of such convicts. The first free settlers arrived in New South Wales in 1793, after Phillip had left the colony; but their arrival was due to his despatches. The work committed to Phillip was in some ways squalid; nevertheless, he has rightly taken rank among “ the builders of Greater Britain.”

The success or failure of one-man government will always depend upon the efficiency of the directing mind. So regardless, however, were the home authorities of this elementary truth, that a considerable interval took place between the departure of Phillip and the arrival of his successor. Phillip left Sydney in December, 1792; Hunter did not reach that place till September, 1795. This interregnum proved cala­mitous to the colony. The military Acting-Governor superseded the civil Courts; the restrictions against the supply of spirits to convicts were relaxed; and, when Hunter at last arrived, he proved unable to abate the evils which had arisen. In 1799 he was recalled. While the colony was suffering evil days, a discovery was made, which, more than anything else, rendered possible a different and happier Australia. Phillip had reported that sheep would not thrive in New South Wales; but in 1794 Captain MacArthur, who had gone out as an officer in the New South Wales Corps, began his efforts in the direction of producing fine wool; and two years later he obtained some sheep of the pure merino breed from the Cape. It was from these beginnings that the great pastoral industry of Australia took its rise.

The appointment of Hunter’s successor, King, was made, though late, on the advice of Phillip, who had recommended him for the post. The task which awaited the new Governor was very difficult. The unrestricted importation of spirits had proved the curse of the colony; and to check this evil was to come in conflict with vested interests and to incur un­popularity. Nevertheless, the landing of spirits without a written permit for the specific quantity was forbidden; and in no circumstances was drink recognised as an object of traffic. We are told that nearly 70,000 gallons of spirits and over 31,000 gallons of wine were refused a landing during King’s government. Moreover, the fixing of reasonable prices made the trade less tempting. The improvement in the morals of the colony during King’s period of government was attested by those best able to pronounce an opinion.

In 1802 a considerable flutter was caused in the little community by the appearance of two French vessels under Captain Baudin. The avowed object of the expedition was scientific; and it received a friendly welcome, even before the announcement of the Peace of Amiens. It was rumoured, however, that the real object was to found French colonies in the southern seas. In any case, without the command of the sea, such colonies must have succumbed to the English. After the death of the gallant Baudin, the French authorities at Mauritius, having captured and imprisoned the explorer Flinders on his passage to England, attempted, by the use of his papers, to appropriate for their ships the credit of his discoveries along the south coast of Australia.

King’s successor, Bligh, arrived in Sydney in August, 1806; and a change at once took place in the aspect of affairs. In putting down the liquor-traffic, he acted with such violence and illegality that Major Johnston, who commanded the forces at Sydney, took the strong step of deposing and imprisoning the Governor. That such an event could occur, shows a startling state of things; but it is doubtful whether, in the circumstances, the action of Major Johnston and his associates was not justified. The impotent conclusion of Johnston’s court-martial in England, which, while finding him guilty, contented itself with cashiering him, virtually admitted the provocation under which the colony laboured. “My will is the la ” was Bligh’s motto; and it is easy to see how, on such principles, the Governor’s power might be abused.

Of the form of government which prevailed throughout this period it is difficult to form a clear notion. The first three Governors were sailors, accustomed to the discipline of a man-of-war. No nail, King explained, was issued without the written order of the Governor. The settlers and free labourers were compelled to attend at stated musters. Strict regulations enforced the observance of Sunday; and all persons found strolling about the towns of Sydney and Paramatta during the time of divine service were summarily locked up. A paternal government fixed the rate at which all articles could be sold. Written promissory notes were forbidden. The quality of flour was rigidly prescribed. No cow, ewe, or breeding sow might be killed; and weekly returns had to be furnished of all slaughtered stock. Meanwhile the colony was slowly developing. Eighteen years after its foundation there were between six and seven hundred landholders, of whom about four hundred were ex-convicts. About 20,000 acres were under cultivation, and over 1-14,000 under pasture.

The military situation seemed to demand a military Governor as Bligh’s successor; and Major-General Nightingale was intended for the post. The 73rd Regiment under Colonel Macquarie was detached for service in the colony; and Macquarie was to act as Lieutenant-Governor during the absence of the Governor. Nightingale, however, never took up the appointment; and Macquarie was made Governor. The long period of his government, which lasted till 1821, embodied in crude exaggeration the theory which was to yield to new influences. Macquarie believed in Australia as a country for convicts and emancipists, and resented the presence in their midst of free settlers. These, he thought, as unwelcome intruders, had no cause for complaint if he refused to treat them as freemen. Macquarie placed on record his deliberate opinion that he was justified in flogging “ profligate men, though at the time free, without any trial or examination before a Court.” This flogging occurred in 1816, and the justification was written four years afterwards. How from such beginnings Australia gradually developed, until now it is perhaps the most democratic community upon the face of the earth, will be told later.

In spite of the wide terms of his commission, New South Wales, as known to Phillip, included only the present county of Cumberland; it stretched from Broken Bay in the north to Botany Bay in the south. The exploration of the Hawkesbury and Nepean rivers in 1789 opened up a large stretch of fertile country on their banks; and the crossing of the Blue Mountains in 1813 enabled the rich district of Bathurst to be thrown open to settlement. In 1797 the mouth of the Hunter river was discovered; and a branch depot for convicts was afterwards started there. So little was known of the coast of Australia that it was not till 1798 that Bass, sailing in an open boat, proved Van Diemen’s Land to be a separate island. In 1801-3 Flinders first made a survey of the coast of southern Australia. Port Phillip was discovered in January, 1802; and it was decided to form a settlement there as well as in Van Diemen’s Land. But the Lieutenant-Governor, Collins, who arrived in October, 1803, formed a most unfavourable opinion of the site; and he was allowed to remove to Van Diemen’s Land, where he founded the settlement of Hobart. A settlement was also started at Port Dalrymple on the north coast of the island.

If the early history of New South Wales crudely illustrates the temper of the times with regard to colonisation, in Canada a very different problem was exercising the minds of British statesmen and Governors. The history of Canada down to the British conquest has been described in a previous volume. At first the new province was placed under military rule; but the disposition of the British Government, both at home and in Canada, was very conciliatory, and the system was well adapted to the simple character of the population. There was distress, owing to the delay of the French Government in admitting liability on the paper-money; but, upon the whole, the people seemed fairly content with their new rulers. The problem how to recognise the position of the Roman Catholic Church, while preventing it from becoming a nucleus for French intrigue, was solved by tacitly allowing claims which could not be openly admitted.

It was the singular good fortune of Great Britain that, when war broke out with France in 1793, it came in such a fashion as to alienate the natural sympathies of the Canadian people. The British Governors were under no illusion as to their temper; there was acquiescence in British rule, but the patriotism and prejudices of generations could not be uprooted in a day. The British officers, to whom the care of the new colony was entrusted, regarded with special favour the simple and pious inhabitants, and drew comparisons between them and the can­tankerous and meddlesome “sutlers and traders,” as they called the New England commercial immigrants. Nevertheless the British rulers, in their efforts to conciliate their new subjects, had no easy task. The deep-rooted British prejudice against Roman Catholicism proved a serious hindrance. The royal instructions, which forbade holy orders being conferred “ without a licence first had and obtained from the Crown,” were, however, quietly ignored; and, in spite of occasional friction, the relations between the authorities and the Roman Catholic hierarchy were on the whole friendly. The feudal system, which had survived in Canada, was a very different thing from that swept away by the Revolution in France. “By degrees,” the Lieutenant-Governor, Milnes, wrote in 1800, “the Canadian gentry have become nearly extinct; and few of them, on their own territory, have the means of living in a more affluent and imposing style than the simple habitants, who feel themselves in every respect as independent as the seigneur himself, with whom they have no further connexion than the obligation of having their corn ground at his mill, paying their toll of a fourteenth bushel, which they consider more as a burdensome tax than as a return to him for the land conceded by his family to their ancestors for ever, upon no harder condition than the obligation above mentioned, a trifling rent, and that of paying a twelfth to the seigneur upon any transfer of the lands.”

In this state of things it was obvious that the seed of social revolu­tion would fall on stony ground, though reports of French republican designs on Canada fill a large part of the state-papers of the time. The habitants, it is true, displayed great reluctance to serve in the militia, and, on the first day they were called out, “broke into a mob and refused to be balloted for.” But this was attributed to long disuse of military service rather than to active disloyalty. Here and there a French patriot might lament that Canada had not been “redemanded” at the Peace of Amiens; but, on the other hand, French Canadians, especially the religious institutions and the clergy, contributed substantial sums to the cost of the war. In any case, the risk of attack from France was never serious. Napoleon, who, conscious of his lack of sea-power, abandoned Louisiana to the United States, was never in a position to invade Canada with success.

If political conditions thus favoured the beginnings of British Canada, she was also fortunate in her early rulers. Compared with the average of mediocre place-hunters who had presided over the destinies of the American colonies, the first Governors of Canada stand out con­spicuously. Murray (1763-6) was an upright soldier, and a persona grata to the Canadian population; Haldimand (1778-85) was a hard­working and conscientious Swiss, whose reputation has been vindicated from the aspersions of earlier writers by the publication of the records in the Canadian archives. But above all, one name must always be asso­ciated with the making of British Canada—that of Sir Guy Carleton. As Lieutenant-Governor or Governor of Quebec from 1766 to 1778, and again, from 1786 to 1796, as Governor of Quebec and subsequently Governor-General of the British North American possessions after the passing of the Constitutional Act, he had unrivalled means of judging of the character of the new colony; and no one could have used his knowledge to better purpose.

Even Carleton, however, was unable to check one of the worst abuses of the old British colonial system. In indignant language he called attention to the abuses of the system of fees and perquisites to judges, officials, and others. He denounced a system “which alienates every servant of the Crown from whoever administers the King’s government. This policy I consider as coeval with His Majesty’s governments in North America, and the cause of their destruction. As its object was not public but private advantage, so this principle has been pursued with diligence, extending itself unnoticed, till all authority and influence of government on this continent was overcome, and the Governor reduced almost to a mere corresponding agent, unable to resist the pecuniary speculations of gentlemen in office, or to convict their connections and associates of any enormity whatever. It was not therefore surprising that this phantom of an executive power should be swept away at the first outset of a political storm....Whatever tends to enfeeble the executive power on this continent tends to sever it for ever from the Crown of Great Britain.” It was in fact the weakness rather than the tyranny of the executive which was the chief evil of the old system of government; and it is this weakness for which responsible government has provided the remedy. But in Carleton’s time responsible government was far distant; and a dreary waste had to be passed, wherein the weakness of the executive, the private interests of the Council, and the irresponsible clamour of the Assembly were destined gradually to bring about the final impasse, relief from which was found in a peaceful revolution.

Under the proclamation of October 7, 1763, regular Courts to ad­minister English law were to be erected; and the promise of a General Assembly was held out. The situation had been complicated by the arrival of some two hundred immigrants from the American colonies. These regarded with dislike and contempt the ignorant population which surrounded them, and resented strongly the delay in granting a popular Assembly, in which they alone, as Protestants, would have taken part. To such the rule of a Protestant minority over Roman Catholics seemed in the nature of things. The English settlers were mostly traders or disbanded soldiers; and the Justices of the Peace were largely recruited from the ranks of those who had failed in business. Such men “sought to repair their broken fortunes at the expense of the people.” Grave scandals occurred in the administration of the law. In consequence, an ordinance was passed in 1770 limiting the power of the Justices. At the same time more drastic measures were recognised to be necessary. In the special circumstances of the colony, a popular Assembly seemed impossible; but there was no reason why a French people should not enjoy the benefit of French customs and laws.

These views were embodied in the Quebec Act, 1774. Under it, a Council, to consist of not more than twenty-three nor less than seventeen members, was created. The power conferred on it to pass ordinances did not include the right to levy general taxes or duties. The French Canadian law was to prevail in questions “relative to property or civil rights; but the English criminal law was to remain in force on the ground of its “certainty and lenity.” The wisdom of the Quebec Act was within a short time justified, when the Canadians, generally speaking, declined to join the rebellious American colonies; but there was no good reason for retaining within the limits of the Roman Catholic colony the territory to the west of the Alleghany Mountains, which was the natural heritage of the American provinces. While, however, the policy of conciliation towards the inhabitants of French extraction was wise in its day—and it is idle to imagine that the French nationality could have been peacefully destroyed—the consequences of the American War of Independence greatly altered the situation.

Many American settlers, refusing to make terms with tire new Republic, sought a new home in Nova Scotia and the western districts of Quebec, where they became known as “United Empire Loyalists.” The presence of this new element rendered necessary some modification of the Quebec Act. That the Constitutional Act of 1791 was not proposed without anxious forethought is clear to every student of the records. Sir Guy Carleton, while at home on leave, had assisted in framing the Quebec Act. In 1786 he became Governor-General, with the title of Lord Dorchester. The following year we find him confessing himself at “ a loss for a plan.” He recognised the objection to separate assemblies, and hankered after a “more general government” than was provided by the mere existence of a “Governor-General.” In the same spirit, Chief Justice Smith, an American loyalist, speaking with the bitterness of past experience, protested against the establishment of democracy implied by the creation of separate petty legislatures. There was, however, much force in Grenville’s objection that the presence in the same assembly of representatives of rival nations, with rival interests, who had served no apprenticeship in the give and take of political life, would be a dangerous experiment. Dorchester deprecated haste. He considered that economic reforms were more urgent than political, that socage tenure should be introduced in new grants of land, and that the amount of a single grant should be limited to 1000 acres. Still it was clearly desirable that English freemen should enjoy popular government; and loyalty to their pledged word forbade that the British Government should refuse to the French of Lower Canada what they were granting to the English in Upper Canada.

Under the Constitutional Act, 1791, the province was divided; and separate legislatures were established in the two new provinces. French laws and customs could thus be retained in Lower Canada, while the English population of Upper Canada obtained the benefit of English law. The English inhabitants of Quebec were the chief sufferers under the Act. Under the electoral arrangements made by the acting­ governor, Sir Alured Clarke, the proportion of representatives in the Assembly was fixed according to the existing population of the different districts. At this time, the agricultural population was almost entirely comprised in the French seigneuries; and, the number of members of the Assembly remaining the same, the English townships, as they developed, did not receive adequate representation. Looking back, we may regret that no attempt was made to strengthen the government by adding to the efficiency of the Executive Council. There was in it no division into departments, no individual responsibility, and no individual super­intendence. The claim of Dorchester to select councillors to form an inner cabinet was not approved by the home authorities; and the Executive Council was a mere Privy Council, wherein men of wholly different views might sit side by side. Dorchester’s successor, Prescott, who arrived at Quebec in 1796, became involved, from the outset, in a hopeless struggle with his Council over the question of land grants, and, while continuing to receive his salary as Governor, spent most of his term of office in England. His successor in the government, Milnes, also found himself thwarted and opposed by Chief Justice Osgoode. It need not have passed the wit of man to find a remedy for this unfortunate state of things.

With regard to the Legislative Council, one provision of the Act has excited much derision. Pitt proposed that power should be given to the Crown to give hereditary titles to the members of the Canadian Upper House. Colonial conditions were hardly such as to render advisable the creation of such titles; nevertheless, the object of the Government in proposing it was undoubtedly wise. In Grenville’s words it was, “ To give to the upper branch of the Legislature a greater degree of weight and consequence than was possessed by the councils in the old colonial governments, and to establish in the province a body of men having that motive of attachment to the existing form of government which arises from the possession of personal or hereditary distinction.” In Canada, no less than in the old American colonies, the root of political difficulties lay in the fact that a democratic Legislature was confronted with a Governor autocratic in theory, aristocratic by traditions and associations. We are familiar with the various forms of “ influence ” which, in England, bridged the gulf between the old system of government and the new. The want of a genuine aristocracy had been one cause of the American Revolution; and British statesmen were certainly not wrong in aiming at supplementing this defect in Canada. It was, however, easier to will than to accomplish. Dorchester, from the first, advised that the seigneurs should be attached in every possible way to the British Government. Unfortunately they were, for the most part, poor; and the feudal system of tenure, without the military obligations connected with it, afforded few points of contact between the lords and the censitaires, who to all intents and purposes resembled English copyhold tenants. A real source of grievance to the Canadians was the purchase of these estates by Englishmen, and the more rigid enforcement of legal rights. The sudden disbandment of the Canadian regiment, raised for the Indian war in 1764, left behind it a feeling of bitterness, which the well-meant efforts of the British Government were not able altogether to remove. Moreover, considerable grants of land to the impoverished seigneurs would have been necessary to make them any real check to the progress of democracy.

In this state of things the Assembly fell more and more under the domination of professional men, who bad sprung from the class of habitants. Although the general level of elementary education was lamentably low, opportunities were not wanting for the more clever members of a family to receive an advanced education. Such an one inspired a blind belief in his kinsfolk and neighbours, who themselves might not be able to read or write. The qualification of electors had been left to the Canadian authorities ; and, though the suffrage might appear extensive according to English standards, any restriction of it would probably have kept out the habitants, whom it was the object of the Act to enfranchise. But, though the result may have been inevitable, it was none the less unpleasant to the British Governors. One after another, they record the same experience. So early as 1800, some years before the publication of a French newspaper (which is sometimes spoken of as the date from which troubles began for the British Government), we find the Lieutenant-Governor, Milnes, writing “ Very few of the seigneurs have sufficient interest to ensure their own election or the election of anyone to whom they give their support and the uneducated habitant has even a better chance of being nominated than the first officer under the Crown.” On the whole, however, the relations between the Governor and the Assembly were satisfactory until the time of Craig. In 1810, according to that official, the Assembly consisted of six petty shopkeepers, a blacksmith, a miller, fifteen ignorant peasants, a doctor or apothecary, and twelve Canadian avocats and notaries, besides “four so far respectable people that at least they do not keep shops.” Ten Englishmen completed the list. “There is not one person coming under the description of a Canadian gentleman among them.”

Nor was it only in Lower Canada that indignant Governors espied the cloven hoof of democracy. Upper Canada had been peopled by British soldiers and American loyalists, a race that might have been expected to stand by the mixed system of government to which they were accustomed. Yet from Upper Canada the active Lieutenant-Governor, Simcoe, reported that the general spirit of the country was against the election to the Assembly of half-pay officers, and in favour of men who dined in common with their servants. The rulers of the Assembly were active and zealous for particular measures which were soon shown to be “ improper or futile.”

Dorchester resigned in 1795 on the ground that he did not agree with the policy of the Government “to divide and subdivide and to form independent governments instead of consolidating, as is done in the United States.” Separate governments had been carved out of Nova Scotia for New Brunswick and for Cape Breton in 1784; and Prince Edward Island also had a separate Lieutenant-Governor. Dorchester resented the practice of the home authorities in holding direct communications with Simcoe. No subsequent Governor could speak with the authority of Dorchester; and henceforth the affairs of the two provinces ran in recognised separate channels. In Lower Canada the difficulties in the way of government came to a head during Sir James Craig’s term of office, which lasted from 1807 to 1811. Craig was an honest but obstinate soldier, slowly sinking under an incurable malady. No man was less fitted to the role of constitutional governor. He sought to cut the knot which he was powerless to untie. George Ryland was sent on a secret mission to England to obtain, if possible, the abolition of the Assembly. Ryland not unnaturally found the English ministers, Liverpool and Peel, “weak, very weak,” and failed in his main object; though he obtained more sympathy for his proposal to curb the independence of the Roman Catholic Church. To long-suffering English politicians Craig’s demand for a distinct enunciation of the principle that Canada was not to be governed by the House of Assembly seemed very indiscreet. Moreover, the imminence at this time of war with the United States dictated a policy of con­ciliation with regard to the Canadians. The new Governor (1811), Sir George Prevost, was in every way the opposite of Craig; and the manner in which the Canadians contributed their share to the defence of the Empire in the American War caused a temporary improvement in the relations between the Government and the people. One cause of future friction between the Assembly and the British Government was fortunately as yet lacking. It was not until 1818 that the offer of the Canadian Assembly to undertake the full discharge of the civil service was accepted. Down to that time, the revenue from the fixed customs duties and the sale of the public lands had been largely sup­plemented by grants from the Imperial exchequer. This dependence on the mother-country was no doubt a source of security to the British authorities. It was clear that the right of regulation and control would necessarily follow upon adequate self-taxation.

Throughout this period a continual cause of evil was the reckless and wasteful alienation of the public lands. Land speculators obtained vast tracts, but made no attempt to promote settlement. Well-meant efforts to benefit individuals, such as the grants made to the children of United Empire Loyalists, failed in their object, through the land being, in most cases, resold for a trifling price; and the rules framed against the excessive size of land grants were in practice successfully evaded. The existence of great blocks of clergy reserves was a further hindrance to cultivation.

Nevertheless, in spite of economic failure and the wrangling of politicians, the material development of both provinces went slowly on. The population of Lower Canada, about 65,000 at the date of the conquest, had increased to about 250,000 in 1810, of whom some 25,000 to 30,000 were British or American. This British population was, for the most part, confined to the towns of Quebec and Montreal, and even in these remained a minority of about one to three. Upper Canada, which was practically uninhabited by Europeans before the American War, had in 1810 a population of some 70,000. The need for extensive emigration from England had not yet arisen ; but in 1803 some Roman Catholics from the Scottish Highlands emigrated to Upper Canada. The attempt of Lord Selkirk, in 1812, to establish settlements in the Red River valley should be noted as the first invasion of the closed reserves of the great trading companies. The Hudson Bay Company and the North-West Company were actively carrying on the fur trade, but they only held isolated posts. In Lower Canada, Governor Haldimand started the modest beginnings of the system of canals which was to play a great part in Canadian development.

The period was, however, emphatically the day of small things. Throughout we observe the note of despondency. Carleton saw that North America required a population fifty times as large as it then possessed; but that he expected little development seems clear from the view he expressed in 1767 with regard to Quebec. The severe climate (he wrote) and the poverty of the country discouraged all but the natives; and any new stock transplanted would be totally hid and im­perceptible amongst them except in the towns of Quebec and Montreal. The view current in England is probably expressed in a paper written some years after the close of this period by “A Military Man.’’ “The possession of this dreary comer of the world is productive of nothing to Great Britain but expense. Nevertheless, it pleases the people of England to keep it, much for the same reason that it pleases a mastiff or a bull-dog to keep possession of a bare and marrowless bone, towards which he sees the eye of another dog directed. And a fruitful bone of contention has it proved and will it prove betwixt Great Britain and the United States before Canada is merged in one of the divisions of that Empire—an event, however, which will not happen until blood and treasure have been profusely lavished in the attempt to defend what is indefensible and to retain what is not worth having.” The affairs of Canada were to pass through many and evil days before it found political safety under responsible government and economic safety in the develop­ment of its enormous natural resources.

Throughout the whole period in question, Canada was, for practical purposes, confined to what was now its eastern portions. The task of providing a population for Ontario and adding to that of the eastern provinces was enough, without attempting the untrodden regions of the west. Great Britain, however, maintained a lien upon the promise of the future; and when, in 1790, Spain claimed, by right of previous discovery, the northern Pacific coast up to the Russian possessions, and seized British ships trading on this coast, the demand was promptly repudiated. Happily, the action of the French Assembly in refusing to support Spanish pretensions averted war; and the voyage of Van­couver (1790-5) served to call further attention to future possibilities. In 1802 Sir Alexander Mackenzie, who had crossed the continent from the east in 1793, proposed, on behalf of the North-West Company (founded in 1784), to form a supreme civil and military establishment on the island of Nootka at King George’s Sound, with two subordinate posts on the river Columbia and in Sea Otter Harbour. A trading settlement had been founded at Nootka Sound in 1788; and there were scattered settlements north of the Columbia belonging to the Hudson Bay Company; but the time for regular colonisation was not yet. Mackenzie might reasonably protest against the claim of the Hudson Bay Company to bar the way to the opening of the West; but it was not till much later that the grievance became serious.

While continents in the west and in the southern seas were reluctantly travailing with the birth-throes of new English nations, the page of history was occupied by events of a more stormy character. On February 1, 1793, the French Republic declared war against Great Britain; and thenceforth the colonial possessions of the rival Powers became the prize of whoever should obtain the mastery at sea. The West Indian Islands have always possessed strategic importance; but at this time the sugar colonies were valued mainly for their commerce, and as being among the chief sources of maritime power and national wealth within the Empire. The old historian of the West Indies compared with pride the extent of the West Indian and the East Indian trade, and showed that the capital employed in the former exceeded by almost four to one the capital employed in the latter, and that the duties paid to the Government stood in the proportion of over two to one. Tobago, which the peace of 1783 had restored to France, was captured in 1793, as well as the French islands of St Pierre and Miquelon off Newfoundland. In the following year Martinique was taken without the loss of a single life. The possession of the best harbour in the eastern Caribbean Sea rendered this island a position of special importance. St Lucia and Guadeloupe also surrendered in 1794. The attempt, however, to combine with these undertakings the complete oc­cupation of Hayti led to the loss of both the former islands. A French expedition under Victor Hugues recaptured Guadeloupe at the close of 1794, and St Lucia in the following June. Insurrections were at the same time stirred up in the British islands of Dominica, St Vincent, and Grenada, which, in the case of the two latter, were not quelled till the arrival of a British force under Sir Ralph Abercromby. St Lucia sur­rendered on May 26, 1796, after hard fighting, the result being mainly due to the energy and capacity of Brigadier-General Moore.

Meanwhile the absorption of Holland by the French Republic had given new hostages to fortune and the British fleet. The Batavian Republic, established in 1795, was in fact a mere appendage of France; and the Dutch colonial empire became open to English attack. Cape Colony was of importance as the halfway house to the East Indies ; and an expedition was despatched under Admiral Elphinstone and General Craig “ to protect the colony against an invasion of the French.” The Dutch Governor was in a difficult position. The Prince of Orange, the hereditary Stadholder, wrote from England bidding him to submit to the English; but there were no signs of a French invasion, and he preferred to remain faithful to the de facto government in Holland. Nevertheless, the resistance was not very formidable; and, on the arrival of British reinforcements under Sir Alured Clarke, terms of capitulation were arranged on September 16,1795. At the time of this conquest, there were already in existence the outlying districts of Stellenbosch, Swellendam, and Graaff-Reinet. These districts had been occupied in spite of the general policy of the Dutch East India Company; and their existence rendered more difficult the task of the British authorities. At first they seemed inclined not to acquiesce in the surrender; but Stellenbosch and Swellendam soon accepted the British terms; and the Boers of Graaff- Reinet submitted after an abortive attempt at resistance.

At first great stress was laid on the temporary nature of the occupa­tion ; but, whatever the ulterior designs of the British Government, the appointment of Lord Macartney, who arrived at the Cape as Governor in 1797, and the system of government introduced, suggested a permanent retention of the colony. Lord Macartney’s rule, though according to later notions despotic, was just and honest. The economic condition of the people was improved by the English occupation; and the “ free trade” promised to the colonists, though very different from free trade as we now understand it, was certainly an improvement upon the rigid monopoly of the Dutch East India Company. The main difficulty in the way of the British authorities was the same in Cape Colony as in America. An intensely aristocratic social system found itself confronted with a community which, whatever had been its political condition, was intensely democratic. Englishmen of the type of the governing classes of the eighteenth century found it difficult to associate with the tradesmen and farmers of Cape Colony, although feminine tact might sometimes bridge the chasm. Macartney’s stay in the colony was brief; and unhappily Sir George Yonge, who succeeded him at the end of 1799, after General Dundas had acted as Lieutenant-Governor for about a year, laid himself open to grave charges of corruption. Upon investigation at home, he was acquitted of personal bribery; but the state of things revealed at the enquiry was discreditable to his government.

The story of the reduction of the. Dutch possessions in India and of Ceylon is dealt with elsewhere. In the further East, Malacca was taken in 1795, and Amboyna and the Banda Islands in the following year. The year 1796 also witnessed the reduction in South America of Deme- rara, Essequibo, and Berbice; Surinam and the island of Curaçoa were not taken till three or four years later. The alliance of Spain with France cost the former country in 1797 the island of Trinidad, the accidental burning of the Spanish fleet preventing any resistance. In Hayti alone the British attempts met with failure; and they were abandoned in 1798. Subsequent events in the island, and the fate of its able negro ruler, Toussaint L’Ouverture, have been described in a previous chapter. Sweden and Denmark lost their West Indian Islands in 1801. The French alliance proved a costly connexion for countries with over-sea possessions.

In the West Indies throughout this period there existed a variety of forms of government. So long as the negro was deemed a mere chattel, so-called popular government was possible in these islands in a degree which has become impossible in later times. Thus we find Lord Castlereagh writing in 1809 of Jamaica, “The pretension of the Assembly to all the rights and privileges of the House of Commons is quite absurd; they have no other privileges than those naturally arising out of and connected with the colonial and limited purposes for which, by the act of the Crown, they have been created. The control of the army does not belong to them.” Side by side with the constitutional regimes of Jamaica and Barbados were the purely military governments of the islands conquered during the war. Thomas Moore was the governor of St Lucia before its restitution to the French, and Thomas Picton of Trinidad. The case of Picton in Trinidad is especially noteworthy. His instructions were, for the present, to administer Spanish law in both civil and criminal cases. Under the Spanish law torture was permissible; and it was proved that in the case of a Spanish girl a slight form of torture had been employed. Public opinion in England was lashed into a frenzy against the “ bloodstained tyrant”, and Picton became the subject of a criminal indictment.

He was at first found guilty on the charge of applying torture illegally, the counsel for the prosecution having misrepresented the Spanish law; but upon a new trial he was acquitted, while his character was at the same time vindicated by the result of a minute enquiry before the Privy Council. There can be no question as to the honesty and uprightness of Picton, and he proved both an efficient and a popular governor; the fault really lay with the framers of his instructions.

Brief mention may be made of the colony established by the Sierra Leone Company in 1792, with the philanthropic object of introducing civilisation into the West Coast of Africa, and thereby striking a blow at the slave-trade. Negroes introduced from Nova Scotia proved a turbulent addition to the colony. It must be confessed that Sierra Leone failed to realise the hopes of its founders. “Many of the settlers,” we are told, “and even some of those who went out in the Company’s employment, embarked in the service of the slave factories or commenced the trade upon their own account.” The new movement, which recognised the brotherhood of man, found more active expression than in the foundation of Sierra Leone. The Act for the Abolition of the Slave-trade, passed in 1807, should be noted as closely connected with colonial history. The slave-trade had been regarded as one of the bulwarks of the old colonial system; and many believed that its abolition would prove fatal to the colonial interests of Great Britain. This view was vigorously expressed by Lord St Vincent in the House of Lords; but, though the measure was, from an economic point of view, “a leap in the dark,” the conscience of the nation could no longer endure the existence of this plague-spot in its midst.

It was due to the sea-power of Great Britain that Napoleon, who fully recognised the importance of colonial empire, found his best-laid plans working for the aggrandisement of his chief adversary. In 1798 it seemed as though the splendid vision of an Eastern Empire might be realised. The retirement of the British fleet from the Mediterranean left to the French its temporary control. Under the Treaty of Campo Formio (1797) the Ionian Islands had become a French possession; and Malta was seized by Napoleon in June, 1798, on his way to Egypt. Nelson’s pursuit of the French fleet and its destruction in Aboukir Bay are described in a previous volume; but the Battle of the Nile marks a turning-point in colonial history, because among its results is to be placed the permanent British occupation of Malta, which, according to Moore, was in 1800, even after years of neglect, “the strongest place in Europe.” The Maltese rose against the French in August, 1798, the garrison taking refuge in the fortress of La Valetta. After a two years’ blockade by land and sea, they finally surrendered in September, 1800. Nevertheless, the Treaty of Amiens stipulated that Malta should be restored to the Knights of St John; and in the same yielding spirit Great Britain restored to France and her allies all conquests except Trinidad and the Dutch possessions in Ceylon. The retention of Trinidad was perhaps due more to Napoleon’s anger with Spain than to the persistence of English statesmen. It was abundantly manifest that Great Britain had not waged war with the view of enlarging her colonial empire.

The Peace of Amiens was a mere truce; and, had not Napoleon’s retention of Holland and the breakdown of the settlement with regard to Malta given cause, some other reason would have been found for a renewal of hostilities. The provisions with regard to Malta proved incapable of execution; and the publication of General Sebastiani’s report on his tour of observation in Egypt and the Levant justified the contention of those who recognised the importance of Malta as the key to Egypt and the East. In 1803 war was resumed. St Lucia, Tobago, Demerara, Essequibo, and Berbice were quickly retaken: and in the following year Surinam surrendered. Curaçoa and the Danish islands of St Thomas and St Croix were taken in 1807. In 1809 Martinique was captured, and finally Guadeloupe in the following year became British; so that no European flag except the English and the Spanish waved in the West Indies.

Under the Peace of Amiens the Cape of Good Hope had been restored to the Batavian Republic; the right being reserved for British ships to use Cape Town for the purchase of supplies without the payment of duties beyond those payable by Dutch ships. The new system of government was very different from that of the East India Company. A council of four members was to assist the Governor. The judicial authority was made independent of the executive and the legislative. Moderate custom duties replaced the monopoly of the old Company. The Commissioner, de Mist, and the Governor, General Janssens, proved worthy exponents of the new system. Unhappily their ideas of com­prehension and toleration were beyond the understanding of the Dutch farmers with whom they were brought in contact. The Dutch govern­ment was hardly established when Great Britain and France were again at war; and in 1805 an expedition was despatched under Admiral Popham and General Baird against Cape Colony. It arrived at Cape Town in January, 1806; and, after a gallant attempt at resistance, General Janssens was obliged to yield to superior numbers.

Before following the fortunes of Cape Colony, brief mention should be made of a somewhat shameful passage in British history. The home Government had for some time cherished vague schemes of obtaining in South America a position favourable to British trade, through cooperation with the Spanish colonial insurgents. These schemes had, however, been abandoned out of deference to Russia. Nevertheless, early in 1806, Sir Home Popham, without orders, and on the strength of exaggerated rumours of disaffection in La Plata, left Cape Colony, and sailed against Buenos Ayres. That place surrendered on June 27, 1806, to a small body of troops under General Beresford. The capture, however, had been in the nature of a surprise; and in August the British garrison were in turn compelled to surrender to a joint force of Spanish troops from Montevideo and natives of Buenos Ayres. The British fleet blockaded the river; and reinforcements from the Cape were encamped on the sea-coast. Meanwhile the British Government had not the resolution to abandon a conquest of which it had disapproved. Before the news of the loss of Buenos Ayres had reached them, an expedition under Admiral Murray and General Crawford was arranged for the reduction of Chili. British rule was to be substituted for Spanish; but, on the crucial question whether Great Britain would stand by the interests of the inhabitants in the event of peace, all that the Ministry could express was “an anxious wish...so to regulate the con­ditions of any future peace as to leave them no cause for apprehension.” In this state of things it was perhaps fortunate that the loss of Buenos Ayres compelled the expedition to be diverted to its reduction. General Whitelocke was despatched from England, with additional forces, to assume the supreme command. In spite of a partial success gained by Sir Samuel Auclimuty, the attack upon Buenos Ayres ended in failure; and in return for the liberation of English prisoners, General Whitelocke retired from La Plata. Tried by court-martial, he was found guilty and cashiered; but in fact other things, besides the reputation of an incom­petent general, were on their trial in these proceedings.

After the second conquest of Cape Colony, British rule was restored on the old lines. Throughout the period the government was in form a despotism, though the Governors Lord Caledon (1807-11) and Sir John Cradock (1811-4) were well disposed towards the Dutch colonists; and the government was carried on, so far as possible, through Dutch instruments. A cloud, however, soon arose on the horizon, which was to cast a shadow over the future relations of the Dutch with the British authorities. The London Missionary Society was founded in 1794, and a few years later began its work in Cape Colony. It is impossible in a brief summary to enter into the disputes which arose between the missionaries and the Dutch colonists upon the question of the treatment of the natives. Doubtless there were faults on both sides. If the Dutch were often brutal in this respect, as men who live on the borders of civilisation are wont to be, the missionaries were not always gifted with common sense. The full results of these misunderstandings belong to a later date; but, so early as 1812, we find the interference of the home authorities at the bidding of the missionaries causing the so-called “black circuit,” which, according to Dutch sympathisers, left behind it a rankling sense of wrong. At the close of the great war, Holland recognised the permanence of the British occupation of Cape Colony, as well as that of Demerara, Berbice, and Essequibo, receiving in return various payments amounting to the sum of £6,000,000; but whether that occupation would in fact be permanent still remained in doubt. British emigration to Cape Colony did not begin till 1818; and for many years political symptoms portended storms. But for the men of that generation the task of confronting Napoleon was a sufficient burden ; the problem of combining authority with freedom in a colonial empire had to wait for its solution till a later day.

In the Far East, the renewal of Napoleon’s schemes of aggrandisement rendered necessary the reduction by the English of Bourbon, the tie de France (Mauritius), and Java. The two former were taken in 1810; and in Java the Dutch general Janssens surrendered on September 18 of the following year, after an ineffectual resistance. The British occupation, though it continued only five years, was memorable for the reforms initiated by the Governor, Stamford Raffles. The original intention of the East India Company had been that the island when taken should be handed over to its native inhabitants. The Governor­General of India, Lord Minto, who accompanied the expedition, at once saw the impossibility of this course; and an interim British government was set on foot. That, in this provisional state of things and with so little time in which to work, much of Raffles’ system of reform remained on paper, is not surprising; the wonder is that so much was carried out.

The Dutch East India Company had come to an end in 1798, but the substitution of the Batavian Republic for the Company led to no real change of system. The appointment of Daendels as Governor in 1807 was followed by a reorganisation of the system of government; but the lot of the natives, weighed down by the payment of “contingents” and by forced labour, was in no way improved. To them the substitution of a rigorous and militant central authority for the malversation of petty officials meant merely an increase of burdens; and Daendels’ successor, Janssens, again and again reported the extreme unpopularity of the government. Raffles set himself to remove the causes of this unpopularity. It is true that the ideas to which he sought to give practical embodiment were not in themselves new. A Dutch ex-official, Dirk van Hogendorp, had some years earlier proposed the abolition of all forced services and the transference of the land to the common people, along with the introduction of a general tax in kind on the land, and a poll­tax on persons. The difficulty lay in the application of these theories. In his own words Raffles proposed: “ 1st. The entire abolition of all forced delivery of produce at inadequate rates, and of all feudal services, with the establishment of a perfect freedom in cultivation and trade. 2nd. The assumption, on the part of the Government, of the immediate superintendence of the lands, with the revenues and rents thereof, without the intervention of the regents whose office shall in future be confined to public duties. 3rd. The renting out of the lands so assumed in large or small estates, according to local circumstances, on leases for a moderate term.”

After a tentative employment of the agency of intermediate lessees, it was finally decided that the Government should enter into direct contact with individual peasant proprietors. In the nature of things it was impossible that Raffles’ system should at once come into full working order. It required, as a condition for success, a survey of the native lands and a body of trained European civil servants. Moreover, financial exigencies forbade the immediate abolition of all forced deliveries; and the same cause prevented the native regents from receiving such allow­ances as alone would have rendered possible a complete change of system. The truth with regard to Raffles’ reforms is by no means easy to arrive at; for, while his sanguine temperament was apt to confuse intention with accomplishment, the Dutch officials, after the restoration of the island, would naturally be inclined to depreciate the work of the daring English innovator. Granting that his work must be measured rather by its promise than by its actual fulfilment, we shall admit that enough was effected to establish Raffles’ title to rank among the greatest of English colonial governors. In the prevailing temper of the time regarding colonies it was not without an ironic appropriateness that such a man’s labours should have been expended on a colony destined not to remain British.

By the first Treaty of Paris (May, 1814) Malta was recognised as British; but all the French colonies conquered by England were re­stored, with the exception of Tobago, St Lucia, and Mauritius, with its dependencies Rodrigues and Seychelles. By the London Convention of August, 1814, Great Britain agreed to restore all the Dutch colonies except the Cape of Good Hope, Demerara, Essequibo, and Berbice. The islands of Banda were given up to the Dutch in exchange for Cochin and its dependencies on the coast of Malabar. The result of the great war was not so much to add to the size of the British Empire, though the gain of Cape Colony led in time to a great extension of territory, as, by the assertion of sea-power, to secure to the scattered portions of that Empire their peaceful development under British supremacy.

 

 

CHAPTER XXIV.

ST HELENA.