Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3)Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
History
Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3)
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English literature -- History and criticism; Great Britain -- History
of the English; and nurses sing children to sleep with a jingling ballad
about the fleet horses and richly caparisoned elephants of Sahib Warren
Hostein.
The gravest offences of which Hastings was guilty did not affect his
popularity with the people of Bengal; for those offences were committed
against neighboring states. Those offences, as our readers must have
perceived, we are not disposed to vindicate; yet, in order that the
censure may be justly apportioned to the transgression, it is fit that
the motive of the criminal should be taken into consideration. The
motive which prompted the worst acts of Hastings was misdirected and
ill-regulated public spirit. The rules of justice, the sentiments of
humanity, the plighted faith of treaties, were in his view as nothing
when opposed to the immediate interest of the state. This is no
justification, according to the principles either of morality, or of
what we believe to be identical with morality, namely, far-sighted
policy. Nevertheless, the common sense of mankind, which in questions of
this sort seldom goes far wrong, will always recognize a distinction
between crimes which originate in an inordinate zeal for the
commonwealth, and crimes which originate in selfish cupidity. To the
benefit of this distinction Hastings is fairly entitled. There is, we
conceive, no reason to suspect that the Rohilla war, the revolution of
Benares, or the spoliation of the Princesses of Oude, added a rupee to
his fortune. We will not affirm that, in all pecuniary dealings, he
showed that punctilious integrity, that dread of the faintest appearance
of evil, which is now the glory of the Indian civil service. But when
the school in which he had been trained and the temptations to which he
was exposed are considered, we are more inclined to praise him for his
general uprightness with respect to money, than rigidly to blame him for
a few transactions which would now be called indelicate and irregular,
but which even now would hardly be designated as corrupt. A rapacious
man he certainly was not. Had he been so he would infallibly have
returned to his country the richest subject in Europe. We speak within
compass when we say that, without applying any extraordinary pressure,
he might easily have obtained from the zemindars of the Company's
provinces and from neighboring princes, in the course of thirteen years,
more than three millions sterling, and might have outshone the splendor
of Carlton House and of the Palais Royal. He brought home a fortune such
as a Governor-General, fond of state and careless of thrift, might
easily, during so long a tenure of office, save out of his legal salary.
Mrs. Hastings, we are afraid, was less scrupulous. It was generally
believed that she accepted presents with great alacrity, and that she
thus formed, without the connivance of her husband, a private hoard
amounting to several lacs of rupees. We are the more inclined to give
credit to this story because Mr.
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