Dennis Wheatley - The Rape Of Venice

The struggle with France and Clive's activities had changed the Company from a great organisation concerned only with trade to one also responsible for the administration of vast territories. The Company had not sought, and was actually averse to assuming, such responsibilities, and the majority of its Servants were unsuited, by habits they had already acquired, to be trusted with such work.

Those habits arose from the fact that the Company paid its Servants hopelessly inadequate salaries, compensating them with the right to trade on their own account, and that in the East immemorial custom decreed that anyone who benefited from a transaction should give the other party to it a present. Mir Jafer, for example, on being placed by the British on the throne of Bengal, had distributed among Clive and his officers half-​a-​million pounds. Later Clive had been called to account by Parliament. His reaction had been to protest that he stood astonished that he had been content with such a modest sum, and Parliament, knowing the circumstances, unanimously acquitted him of having used his power to enrich himself unreasonably. But, now that the Servants of the Company, great and small, had become officials with such wide powers of patronage, they proceeded to use them most unscrupulously.

Stories came home to England of Indian merchants and land-​owners being blackmailed and otherwise oppressed. Such tales were soon followed by an influx of middle-​class and often vulgar Servants of the Company who had brought home fortunes, were termed in no friendly spirit 'Nabobs', and whose ostentation gave considerable offence in the country areas where they bought properties from the worse-​off of the old land-​owning class. The misery of the Indian people had been further increased in 1770 by the most terrible famine on record, and hundreds of influential people in Britain were agitating for their interests to be protected.

This national outcry led to the Regulating Act of 1773, by which the Company's nominee for Governor-​General had to be approved by Government and, although given authority over Madras and Bombay as well as Calcutta, his every act had to receive the sanction of a Council, a majority of whom could, if they disagreed with his policy, obstruct it with a veto. The Act also created a High Court of Justice to which Indians could appeal without fear that it would favour the Company, since its Judges were responsible only to the Home Government.

This was the first shackle put upon the complete independence of the Company, and it fell heaviest on Warren Hastings, whom they had appointed as Governor of Bengal the previous year. Hastings was a man of integrity, vision and vigour, but he was faced with the still unsettled state of India and the competing ambitions of its many Princes.

The Marathas, who had combined under the Peshwa at Poona, were again in control in the north at Delhi. To the east of it an Afghan chief had usurped the throne of Rohilkhand and was threatening Oudh. In the west, owing to a trade route dispute, the Marathas were threatening Bombay. In the south Hyderabad had become hostile to the Company and the throne of Mysore had been seized by a Mohammedan adventurer named Hyder Ali, who threatened to. and later did, overrun the Carnatic.

The new Council consisted of five members: Hastings, who was its chairman, Barwell, a Senior Servant who understood the problems of the Company and so loyally supported Hastings, and three nominees of Parliament whose ignorance of India was such that, on landing in Calcutta, they thought that because the natives had bare feet it was because the Company had inflicted taxes so crushing upon them that they could no longer afford boots. Led by Philip Francis, the newcomers at once adopted a line of violent opposition to Hastings, and by their majority in Council consistently thwarted his attempts to bring order out of chaos.

For two years his position was made intolerable, then one of Francis's supporters died, giving Hastings control through his casting vote as chairman. But the bitter struggle continued for another four years until Francis, after having been wounded in a duel by Hastings, went home.

During those years Britain had become involved in war with her American Colonists, France, Holland and Spain, and once more events in Europe had their repercussions in India. Although Britain's enemies could no longer put an army in the field there, they could still stimulate avaricious Princes to take up arms against the Company, and Hastings had to wage wars against the Marathas who menaced Bombay, the Rohillas in support of Britain's ally Oudh, and Hyder Ali the bold usurper of the throne of Mysore. With the aid of three fine soldiers, General Sir Eyre Coote and Colonels Goddard and Popham, all three wars were won. and by brilliant diplomacy Hastings secured the paramountcy of the Company over vast areas of India.

But the wars had to be paid for. The Company grudged every penny spent on military operations and, owing to many years of rapacity and mismanagement by its Servants, its funds had dwindled alarmingly. The war in America and Europe had strained the resources of the Government at home to such a point that it could not afford to give help. So Hastings had to find the money himself. He found it in the only way possible for him: by withholding subsidies the Company had contracted to pay to certain potentates whose friendship was now doubtful, and by extracting great sums from the Indian allies whose territories he was protecting.

In 1873 a general peace was agreed by the Powers. The following year young Mr. Pitt, who had recently become Prime Minister, put through Parliament his India Act. Its object was to put an end to corrupt and arbitrary administration by the Company's Servants. In effect, Parliament took over the responsibility for ruling all areas that were, or should come, under British control. An India Board was created with Dundas as its President, and for the future the Company was required to frame its policy, and nominate its senior Servants, in consultation with the Board. Thus after two hundred years the Company finally lost all power in India other than its trading monopoly.

In the teeth of extraordinary difficulties, Hastings had already introduced many of the reforms which were the object of Pitt's Bill. He was the best friend that the people of India ever had, and he laid the foundations for the just and honourable administration of the Indian Civil Service which, in the following century, did so much to develop the country and bring western civilisation to it.

But in 1784 he returned home to be met with ingratitude and obloquy. With almost unbelievable venom his old enemy Francis stirred up Parliament against him. He was made the scapegoat for his corrupt predecessors and colleagues, and impeached. Burke, the most brilliant orator of the day, had taken up the cause of the oppressed people of India and hurled invective at him. Fox and Sheridan resorted to every mean trick their excellent intelligences could devise to pull him down.

The trial dragged on for seven years. Every act of Hastings during his fourteen years of administration was gone into minutely in the hope of finding evidence of his corruption. The main charges concerned his conduct in connection with the Rohilla war, and the way in which he had raised money for that and other wars, particularly his extraction of a large sum from Chait Singh, the Rajah of Benares, and his attempts to secure from the Begums of Oudh a million pounds that these two Princesses had been left by the late Nawab of that country. At last he was acquitted on all charges and, although his defence had cost him his fortune, the Company supported him in his old age. In 1813, at the age of 81, he was called on to give evidence before Parliament on a matter concerning India. The House then did him the honour of receiving him standing and bareheaded.