Hastings is of great antiquity, and was a place of some importance in the time of the Anglo-Saxons. Some derive its name from Hasten, a Danish pirate who ravaged that coast in the time of Alfred the Great. According to the French biographer of Edward the Confessor, it was so called from the hasty manner in which William renewed its fortifications. It is mentioned in the chronicles as Haeslingas, and is reckoned as distinct from the shire of Sussex. In the Bayeux tapestry it is called Heslinga-ceaslra. A mint was established at it by Athelstan in 924, of which there is some notice in the Domesday Book. In 1049, according to the Worcester Chronicle, its seamen distinguished themselves in the pursuit of the pirate Swend after the murder of Beorn, and took two of his ships. Like the other principal seaports on the southern coast, it was garrisoned by Harold in view of the possible landing of William the Conqueror,to whom, however, it suιτendered without striking a blow, and who selected it as the site of a permanent camp, and erected a wooden fortress on the cliff on which the castle was afterwards built. From this camp William, on the morning of October 14th, 1066, set out to meet Harold at Senlac Hill; and after his great victory there he returned to it, and remained encamped five days in the hope of receiving the homage of the English. The site of the original town is supposed to be now in great part covered by the sea. By a charter of William the Conqueror Hastings, together with Hythe,was added to the three previously incorporated ports of Sandwich, Dover, and Romney, and invested with certain privileges, the five being subsequently known as the “Cinque Ports.” In the reign of Edward I. it was rated at 21 ships with 21 seamen in each, for the service of the king for fourteen days at his own charge. In 1377 the town was burned down by th e French, but it was soon afterwards rebuilt. The harbour has fallen almost into disuse since the time of Elizabeth, when the αvooden pier was destroyed by a storm; it does not now admit vessels above 100 tons burthen, and this only at full tide. The town received a charter of incorporation from Elizabeth in 1558, which was confirmed and enlarged by Charles II. In the 42d of Edward III. it obtained the privilege of returning two members to parliament.

HASTINGS, Warren (1732-1818), the first governorgeneral of British India, was born on the 6th of December 1732 in the little hamlet of Churchill in Oxfordshire. He came of a family which had been settled for many generations in the adjoining village of Daylesford; but his great-grandfather had sold the ancestral manor-house, and his grandfather had been unable to maintain himself in possession of the family living. His mother died a few days after giving him birth; his father, Pynaston Hastings, drifted away to perish obscurely in the West Indies. Thus unfortunate in his birth, young Hastings received the elements of education at a charity school in his native village. At the age of eight he was taken in charge by an elder brother of his father, Howard Hastings, who held a post in the customs. After spending two years at a private school at Newington Butts, he was moved to Westminster, where among his contemporaries occur the names of Lord Thurlow and Lord Shelburne, Sir Elijah Impey, and the poets Cowper and Churchill. In 1749, when his headmaster Dr Nichols was already anticipating for him a successful career at the university, his uncle died, leaving him to the care of Mr Chiswick, who was in the direction of the East India Company; and he determined to send his ward to seek his fortune as a “writer” in Bengal.

When Hastings landed at Calcutta in October 1750, the affairs of the East India Company were at a low ebb. Throughout the entire south of the peninsula French influence was predominant. The settlement of Fort St George or Madras, captured by force of arms, had only recently been restored in accordance with a clause of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. The lurid genius of Dupleix everywhere overshadowed the native imagination, and the star of Clive had scarcely yet risen above the horizon. The rivalry between the English and the French, which had already convulsed the south, did not penetrate to Bengal. That province was under the able government of Ali Vardi Khan, who peremptorily forbade the foreign settlers at Calcutta and Chandarnagar to introduce feuds from Europe. The duties of a young “writer” were then such as are implied in the name. At an early date Hastings was placed in charge of an aurang or factory in the interior, where his duties would be to superintend the weaving of silk and cotton goodβ under a system of money advances. In 1755 he was transferred to Kâsimbâzâr, the river-port of the native capital of Mûrshidâbâd. In 1756 the old nawâb died, and was succeeded by his grandson Sirfij-ud-Daulah, a spoilt boy of 19, whose name is indelibly associated with the tragedy of the Black Hole. When that passionate young prince, in revenge for a fancied wrong, resolved to drive the English out of Bengal, his first step was to occupy the fortified factory at Kâsimbâzâr, and make prisoners of Hastings and his companions. Hastings was soon released at the intercession of the Dutch resident, and made use of his position at Mûrshidâbâd to open negotiations with the English fugitives at Falta, the site of a Dutch factory near the mouth of the Hooghly. In later days be used to refer with pride to his services on this occasion, when he was first initiated into the wiles of Oriental diplomacy. After a while, he found it necessary to fly from the Mahometan court, and join the main body of the English at Falta. When the relieving force arrived from Madras under Colonel Clive and Admiral Watson, Hastings enrolled himself as a volunteer, and took part in the action which led to the recovery of Calcutta. Clive showed his appreciation of Hastings’s merits, by appointing him in 1758 to the important post of resident at the court of Mιirshi-dàbâd. It was there that he first came into collision with t'ιe Bengali Brâhman, Nandkumar, whose subsequent fate throws so deep a shadow upon his own fair fame. During his three years of office as resident he was able to render n )t a few valuable services to the Company; but it is more i nportant to observe that his name nowhere occurs in + he official lists of those who derived pecuniary profit from the necessities and weakness of the native chiefs. In 1761 he was promoted to be member of council, under the presidency of Mr Vansittart, who had been introduced by Clive from Madras. The period of Vansittart’s government has been truly described as “the most revolting page of our Indian history.” The entire duties of administration were suffered to remain in the hands of the nawàb, while a few irresponsible English traders had drawn to themselves all re ιl power. The members of council, the commanders of the troops, and the commercial residents plundered on a grand scale. The youngest servant of the Company claimed the right of trading on his own account, free from taxation and from local jurisdiction, not only for himself but also for every native subordinate whom he might permit to use hiβ name. It was this exemption, threatening the very foundations of the Mussulman government, that finally led to a rupture with the nawàb. Macaulay, in his celebrated essay, has said that “of the conduct of Hastings at this time little is known.” As a matter of fact, the book which Macaulay was professing to review describes at length the honourable part consistently taken by Hastings in opposition to the great majority of the council. Sometimes in conjunction only with Vansittart, sometimes absolutely alone, he protested unceasingly against the policy and practices of his colleagues. On one occasion he was stigmatized in a minute by Mr Batson with “having espoused the nawâb’s cause, and as a hired solicitor defended all his actions, however dishonourable and detrimental to the Company.” An altercation ensued. Batson gave him the lie, and struck him in the council chamber. When war was actually begun, Hastings officially recorded his previous resolution to have resigned, in order to repudiate responsibility for measures which he had always opposed. Waiting only for the decisive victory of Buxar over the allied forces of Bengal and Oudh, he resigned his seat and sailed for England in November 1764.

After fourteen years’ residence in Bengal Hastings did not return home a rich man, estimated by the opportunities of his position. According to the custom of the time he had augmented his slender salary by private trade. At a later date, he was charged by Burke with having taken up profitable contracts for supplying bullocks for the use of the Company’s troops. It is admitted that he conducted by means of agents a large business in timber in the Gangetic sandarbans. When at Falta he had married Mrs Campbell, the widow of an officer. She bore him two children, of whom one died in infancy at Mûrshidâbâd, and was shortly followed to the grave by her mother. Their common gravestone is in existence at the present day, bearing d ate July 11, 1759. The other child, a son, was sent to England, and also died shortly before his father’s return. While at home Hastings is said to have attached himself to literary society; and it maybe inferred from his own letters that he now made the personal acquaintance of Samuel Johnson and Lord Mansfield. In 1766 he was called upon to give evidence before a committee of the House of Commons upon the affairs of Bengal. The good sense and clearness of the views which he expressed caused attention to be paid to his desire to be again employed in India. His pecuniary affairs were embarrassed, partly from the liberality with which he had endowed his few surviving relatives. The great influence of Lord Clive was also exercised on his behalf. At last, in the winter of 1768, he received the appointment of second in council at Madras. Among his companions on his voyage round the Cape were the Baron Imhoff, a speculative portrait painter, and his wife, a lady of some personal attractions and great social charm, who was destined henceforth to be Hastings’s life-long companion. Of his two years’ work at Madras it is needless to speak in detail. He won the good-will of his employers by devoting himself to the improvement of their manufacturing business, and he kept his hands clean from the prevalent taint of pecuniary transactions with the nawâb of the Carnatic. One fact of some interest is not generally known. He drew up a scheme for the construction of a pier at Madras, to avoid the dangers of landing through the surf, and instructed his brother-in-law in England to obtain estimates from the engineers Brindley and Smeaton.

In the beginning of 1772 his ambition was stimulated by the nomination to the second place in council at Bengal with a promise of the reversion of the governorship when Mr Cartier should retire. Since his departure from Bengal in 1764 the situation of affairs in that settlement had scarcely improved. The second governorship of Clive was marked by the transfer of the diwdni or financial administration from the Mogul emperor to the Company, and by the enforcement of stringent regulations against the besetting sin of peculation. But Clive was followed by two inefficient successors; and in 1770 occurred the most terrible Indian famine on record, which is credibly estimated to have swept away one-third of the population. In April 1772 Warren Hastings took his seat as president of the council at Fort William. His first care was to carry out the instructions received from home, and effect a radical reform in the system of government. Clive’s plan of governing through the agency of the native court had proved a failure. The directors were determined “to stand forth as dîwàn, and take upon themselves by thcir own servants the entire management of the revenues.” All the officers of administration were transferred from Mûrshidâbâd to Calcutta, which Hastings boasted at this early date that he would make the first city in Asia. This reform involved the ruin of many native reputations, and for a second time brought Hastings into collision with the wily Brâhman, Nandkumar. At the same time a new settlement of the land revenue on leases for five years was begun, and the police and military systems of the country were placed upon a new footing. Hastings was a man of immense industry, with an insatiable appetite for details. The whole of this large series of reforms was conducted under his own personal supervision, and upon no part of his multifarious labours did he dwell in his letters home with greater pride. As an independent measure of economy, the stipend paid to the titular nawâb of Eengal, who was then a minor, was reduced by one-half—to sixteen lakhs a year (say £160,000). Macaulay imputes this reduction to Hastings as a characteristic act of financial immorality; but in truth it had been expressly enjoined by the court of directors, in a despatch dated six months before he took up office. His pecuniary bargains with Sùjah Daula, the nawâb wazir of Oudh, stand on a different basis. Hastings himself always regarded them as incidents in the general scheme of his foreign policy. The Mahrattas at this time had got possession of the person of the Mogul emperor, Shâh Alam, from whom Clive obtained the grant of Bengal in 1765, and to whom he assigned in return the districts of Allahâbâd and Kora and a tribute of £300,000. With the emperor in their camp, the Mahrattas were threatening the province of Oudh, and causing a large British force to be cantoned along the frontier for its defence. Warren Hastings, as a deliberate measure of policy, withheld the tribute due to the emperor, and resold Allahâbâd and Kora to the wazir of Oudh. The Mahrattas retreated, and all danger for the time was dissipated by the death of their principal leader. The wazir now bethought him that he had a good opportunity for satisfying an old quarrel against the adjoining tribe of Rohillas, who had played fast and loose with him while the Mahratta army was at hand. The Rohillas were a race of Afghan origin, who had established themselves for some generations in a fertile tract west of Oudh, between the Himalayas and the Ganges, which still bears the name of Rohilkhand. They were not so much the occupiers of the soil, as a dominant caste of warriors and freebooters. But in those troubled days their title was as good as any to be found in India. After not a little hesitation, Hastings consented to allow the Company’s troops to be used to further the ambitious designs of his Oudh ally, in consideration of a sum of money which relieved the ever-pressing wants of the Bengal treasury. The Rohillas were defeated in fair fight. Some of them fled the country; and so far as possible Hastings obtained terms for those who remained. The fighting, no doubt, on the part of the wazir was conducted with all the savagery of Oriental warfare; but there is no evidence that it was a war of extermination.

Meanwhile, the affairs of the East India Company had again come under the consideration of Parliament. The Regulating Act, passed by Lord North’s ministry in 1773, effected considerable changes in the constitution of the Bengal Government. The council was reduced to four members with a governor-general, who were to exercise certain indefinite powers of control over the presidencies of Madras and Bombay. Hastings was named in the Act as governor-general for a term of five years. The council consisted of General Clavering and the Hon. Colonel Monson, two third-rate politicians of considerable parliamentary influence; Philip Francis, then only known as an able permanent official; and Barwell, of the Bengal Civil Service. At the same time a supreme court of judicature was appointed, composed of a chief and three puisne judges, to exercise an indeterminate jurisdiction at Calcutta. The chiefjustice was Sir Elijah Impey, already mentioned as a schoolfellow of Hastings at Westminster. The whole tendency of the Regulating Act was to establish for the first time the influence of the crown, or rather of parliament, in Indian affairs. The new members of council disembarked at Calcutta on the 19th of October 1774; and on the following day commenced the long feud which scarcely terminated twenty-one years later with the acquittal of Warren Hastings by the House of Lords.' Macaulay states that the members of council were put in ill-humour because their salute of guns was not proportionate to their dignity. In a contemporary letter Francis thus expresses the same petty feeling: “Surely Mr H. might have put on a ruffled shirt.” Taking advantage of an ambiguous clause in their commission, the majority of the council (for Barwell uniformly sided with Hastings) forthwith proceeded to pass in review the recent measures of the governor-general. All that he had done they condemned; all that they could they reversed. Hastings was reduced to the position of a cipher at their meetings. After a time they lent a ready ear to detailed allegations of corruption brought against him by his old enemy Nandkumar. To charges from such a source, and brought in such a manner, Hastings disdained to reply, and referred his accuser to the supreme court. The majority of the council, in their executive capacity, resolved that the governor-general had been guilty of peculation, and ordered him to refund. A few days later Nandkumar was thrown into prison on a stale charge of forgery, tried before the supreme court sitting in bar, found guilty by a jury of Englishmen, and sentenced to be hanged. That Hastings set this prosecution in motion, no reasonable person can doubt; and it is equally clear that Chief-Justice Impey is free from all personal blame. The majority of the council abandoned their supporter, who was executed in due course. He had forwarded a petition for reprieve to the council, which Clavering took care should not be presented in time, and which was subsequently burnt by the common hangman on the motion of Francis. At the time no one dared to impute to Hastings the crime of a judicial murder. But though he had thus silenced the charges brought·against him, a combination of circumstances placed him in a position of fresh difficulty. While the strife was at its hottest, he had sent an agent to England, with a general authority to place his resignation in the hands of the Company under certain conditions. The agent thought fit to exercise that authority. The resignation was promptly accepted, and one of the directors was appointed to the vacancy. But in the meantime Colonel Monson had died, and Hastings was thus restored, by virtue of his casting vote, to the supreme management of affairs. He refused to ratify his resignation; and when Clavering attempted to seize on the governor-generalship, he judiciously obtained an opinion of the supreme court in his own favour. From that time forth, though he could not always command an absolute majority in council, Hastings was never again subjected to gross insult, and his general policy was able to prevail.

A crisis was now approaching in foreign affairs which demanded all the experience and all the genius of Hastings for its solution. Bengal was prosperous, and free from external enemies on every quarter. But the Government of Bombay had hurried on a rupture with the Mahratta confederacy at a time when France was on the point of declaring war against England, and when the mother-country found herself unable to subdue her rebellious colonists in America. Hastings did not hesitate to take upon his own shoulders the whole responsibility of military affairs. All the French settlements in India were promptly occupied. On the part of Bombay, the Mahratta war was conducted with procrastination and disgrace. But Hastings amply avenged the capitulation of Wârgâon by the complete success of his own plan of operations. Colonel Goddard with a Bengal army marched across the breadth of the peninsula, from the valley of the Ganges to the western sea, and achieved almost without a blow the conquest of GuzerAt. Captain Popham, with a small detachment, stormed the rock fortress of Gwalior, then deemed impregnable and the key of Central India; and by this feat held in check Sindiâ, the most formidable of the Mahratta chiefs. The bhonsla, or Mahratta râjâ of Nagpur, whose dominions bordered on Bengal, was won over by the diplomacy of an emissary of Hastings. But while these events were taking place, a new source of embarrassment had arisen at Calcutta. The supreme court, whether rightly or wrongly, assumed a jurisdiction of first instance over the entire province of Bengal. The English common law, with all the absurdities and rigours of that day, was arbitrarily extended to an alien system of society. Zaminddrs, or government renters, were arrested on mesne process; the sanctity of the zαnc0mr, or women’s chamber, as dear to Hindus as to Mahometans, was violated by the sheriff’s officer; . the deepest feelings of the people and the entire fabric of revenue administration were alike disregarded. On this point the entire council acted in harmony. Hastings and Francis went joint-bail for imprisoned natives of distinction. At last, after the dispute between the judges and the executive threatened to become a trial of armed force, Hastings set it at rest by a characteristic stroke of policy. A new judicial office was created in the name of the Company, to which Sir Elijah Impey was appointed, though he never consented to draw the additional salary offered to him. The understanding between Hastings and Francis, originating in this state of affairs, was for a short period extended to general policy. An agreement was come to by which Francis received patronage for his circle of friends, while Hastings was to be unimpeded in the control of foreign affairs. But a difference of interpretation arose. Hastings recorded in an official minute that he had found Francis’s private and public conduct to be “void of truth and honour.” They met as duellists. Francis fell wounded, and soon afterwards returned to England.

The Mahratta war was not yet terminated, but a far more formidable danger now threatened the English in India. The imprudent conduct of the Madras authorities had irritated beyond endurance the two greatest Mussulman powers in the peninsula, the nizâm of the Deccan and Hyder Ali, the usurper of Mysore, who began to negotiate an alliance with the Mahrattas. A second time the genius of Hastings saved the British empire in the east. On the arrival of the news that Hyder had descended from the highlands of Mysore, cut to pieces the only British army in the field, and swept the Carnatic up to the gates of Madras, he at once adopted a policy of extraordinary boldness. He signed a blank treaty of peace with the Mahrattas, who were still in arms, reversed the action of the Madras Government towards the nizâm, and concentrated all the resources of Bengal against Hyder Ali. Sir Eyre Coote, a general of renown in former Carnatic wars, was sent by sea to Madras with all the troops and treasure that could be got together; and a strong body of reinforcements subsequently marched southwards under General Leslie along the coast line of Orissa. The landing of Coote preserved Madras from destruction, though the war lasted through many campaigns and only terminated with the death of Hyder. Leslie’s detachment was decimated by an epidemic of cholera (perhaps the first mention of this disease by name in Indian history); but the survivors penetrated to Madras, and not only held in check the bhonsla and the nizâm, but also corroborated the lesson taught by Goddard—that the Company’s sepoys could march anywhere, when boldly led. Hastings’s personal task was to provide the ways and means for this exhausting war. A considerable economy was effected by a reform in the establishment for collecting the land tax. The Government monopolies of opium and salt were then for the first time placed upon a remunerative basis. But these reforms were of necessity slow in their beneficial operation. The pressing demands of the military chest had to be satisfied by loans, and in at least one case from the private purse of the governor-general. Ready cash could alone fill up the void; and it was to the hoards of native princes that Hastings’s fertile mind at once turned. Clιeyte Sing, râjâ of Benares, the greatest of the vassal chiefs who had grown rich under the protection of the British rule, lay under the suspicion of disloyalty. The wazir of Oudh had fallen into arrears in the payment due for the maintenance of the Company’s garrison posted in his dominions, and his administration was in great disorder. In his case the ancestral hoards were under the control of his mother, the begum of Oudh, into whose hands they had been allowed to pass at the time when Hastings was powerless in council. Hastings resolved to make a progress up country in order to arrange the affairs of both provinces, and bring back all the treasure that could be squeezed out of its holders by his personal intervention. When he reached Benares and presented his demands, the râjâ rose in insurrection, and the governor-general barely escaped with his life. But the faithful Popham rapidly rallied a force for Ids defence. The native soldiery were defeated again and again; Cheyte Sing took to flight, and an augmented permanent tribute was imposed upon his successor. The Oudh business was managed with less risk. The wazir consented to everything demanded of him. The begum was charged with having abetted Cheyte Sing in his rebellion; and after the severest pressure applied to herself and her attendant eunuchs, a fine of more than a million sterling was exacted from her. Hastings appears to have been not altogether satisfied with the incidents of this expedition, and to have anticipated the censure which it received in England. As a measure of precaution, he procured documentary evidence of the rebellious intentions of the râjâ and the begum, to the validity of which Impey obligingly lent his extra-judicial sanction.

The remainder of Hastings’s term of office in India was passed in comparative tranquillity, both from internal opposition and foreign war. The centre of interest now shifts to the India House and to the British Parliament. The long struggle between the Company and the ministers of the crown for the supreme control of Indian affairs and the attendant patronage had reached its climax. The decisive success of Hastings’s administration alone postponed the inevitable solution. His original term of five years would have expired in 1778; but it was annually prolonged by special Act of Parliament until his voluntary resignation. Though Hastings was thus irremovable, his policy did not escape censure. Ministers were naturally anxious to obtain the reversion to his vacant post, and Indian affairs formed at this time the hinge on which party politics turned. On one occasion Dundas carried a motion in the House of Commons censuring Hastings, and demanding his recall. The directors of the Company were disposed to act upon this resolution; but in the court of proprietors, with whom the decision ultimately lay, Hastings always possessed a sufficient majority. Fox’s India Bill led to the downfall of the Coalition Ministry in 1783. The Act which Pitt successfully carried in the following year introduced a new constitution, in which Hastings felt that he had no place. In February 1785 he finally sailed from Calcutta, after a dignified ceremony of resignation, and amid enthusiastic farewells from all classes.

On his arrival in England, after a second absence of sixteen years, he was not displeased with the reception he met with at court and in the country. A peerage was openly talked of as his due, while his own ambition pointed to some responsible office at home. Pitt had never taken a side against him, while Lord Chancellor Thurlow was his pronounced friend. But he was now destined to learn that his enemy Francis, whom he had discomfited in the council chamber at Calcutta, was more than his match in the parliamentary arena. Edmund Burke had taken the subject races of India under the protection of his eloquence. Francis, who had been the early friend of Burke, supplied him with the personal animus against Hastings, and with the knowledge of details, which he might otherwise have lacked. The Whig party on this occasion unanimously followed Burke’s lead. Dundas, Pitt’s favourite subordinate, had already committed himself by his earlier resolution of censure; and Pitt was induced by motives which are still obscure to incline the ministerial majority to the same side. To meet the oratory of Burke and Sheridan and Fox, Hastings wrote an elaborate minute with which he wearied the ears of the House for two successive nights, and he subsidized a swarm of pamphleteers. The impeachment was decided upon in 178G, but the actual trial did not commence until 1788. For seven long years Hastings was upon his defence on the charge of “high crimes and misdemeanours.” During this anxious period he appears to have borne himself with characteristic dignity, such as is consistent with no other hypothesis than the consciousness of innocence. At last, in 1795, the House of Lords gave a verdict of not guilty on all the charges laid against him; and he left the bar at which he had so frequently appeared, with his reputation clear, but ruined in fortune. However large the wealth he brought back from India, all was swallowed up in defraying the expenses of his trial. Continuing the line of conduct which in most other men would be called hypocrisy, he forwarded a petition to Pitt praying that he might be reimbursed his costs from the public funds. This petition, of course, was rejected. At last, when he was reduced to actual destitution, it was arranged that the East India Company should grant him an annuity of £4000 for a term of years, with £90,000 paid down in advance. This annuity expired before his death; and he was compelled to make more than one fresh appeal to the bounty of the Company, which was never withheld. Shortly before his acquittal he had been able to satisfy the dream of childhood, by buying back the ancestral manor of Daylesford, where the remainder of his life was passed in honourable retirement. In 1813 he was called on to give evidence upon Indian affairs before the two Houses of Parliament, which received him with exceptional marks of respect. The university of Oxford conferred on him the honorary degree of D.C.L.; and in the following year he was sworn of the Privy Council, and took a prominent part in the reception given to the duke of Wellington and the allied sovereigns. He died on the 22d of August 1818, in his 86th year, and lies buried behind the chancel of the parish church, which he had recently restored at his own charges.

In physical appearance, Hastings “looked like a great man, and not like a bad man.” The body was wholly subjugated to the mind. A frame naturally slight had been further attenuated by rigorous habits of temperance, and thus rendered proof against the diseases of the tropics. Against his private character not even calumny has breathed a reproach. As brother, as husband, and as friend, his affections were as stedfast as they were warm. By the public he was always regarded as reserved, but within his own inner circle he gave and received perfect confidence. In his dealings with money, he was characterized rather by liberality of expenditure than by carefulness of acquisition. A classical education and the instincts of family pride saved him from both the greed and the vulgar display which marked the typical “nabob,” the self-made man of those days. He could support the position of a governorgeneral and of a country gentleman with equal credit. Concerning his second marriage, it suffices to say that the Baroness Imhoff was about forty years of age, with a family of grown-up children, when the complaisant law of her native land allowed her to become Mrs Hastings. She survived her husband, who seems to have c

HASTINGS, Francis Rawdon Hastings, First Marquis of (1754-1826), ranks among those governorsgeneral of India who, completing the work of Clive and Warren Hastings, achieved the creation of the Indian empire of England. The services of Lord Hastings in this respect were special and important. He was both governorgeneral and commander-in-chief in India from 1813 till the end of 1822; during that period he carried two important wars, the Nepaulese and the Mahratta, to a successful issue; while adding to the territories of the East India Company, he in several respects altered and improved their policy; and by the sagacity and at the same time the generosity of his own administration (in which he exhibited the true qualities of a Christian proconsul) he won reverence from the natives and left a great name in India.

Lord Hastings was in no way connected with Warren Hastings; his family name was Rawdon. His father, Sir John Rawdon of Moira in the county of Down, fourth baronet, was created Baron Rawdon of Moira, and afterwards Earl of Moira, in the Irish peerage. His mother was the Lady Elizabeth Hastings, daughter of the ninth earl of Huntingdon. Both his father and mother appear to have been persons of considerable ability and high cultivation. Lord Rawdon, as he was then called, having gone at an early age to the university of Oxford, joined the army in his seventeenth year as ensign in the 15th foot His life henceforth was entirely spent in the service of his country, and may naturally be divided into four periods :— from 1773 to 1782 he was engaged with much distinction in the American war; from 1783 to 1813 he held various high appointments at home, and took an active part in the business of the House of Lords; from 1813 to 1823 was the period of his labours in India; after retiring from which, in the last years of his life (1824-1826), he was governor of Malta.

In America Lord Rawdon served at the battles of Bunker’s Hill, Brooklyn, White Plains, Monmouth, and Camden, at the attacks on Forts Washington and Clinton, and at the siege of Charleston. In fact he was engaged in all the chief operations of the war. Perhaps his most noted achievements were the raising of a corps at Philadelphia, called the Irish Volunteers, who under him became famous for their fighting qualities, and the victory of Hob-kirk Hill, which, when in command of only a small force, he gained by superior military skill and determination against an American corps T armée. In 1782 he was invalided. The vessel in which he returned to England wa3 captured and carried into Brest. This occasioned the loss of his papers and personal records of the war which would doubtless have been interesting. He was speedily released, and on his arrival in England was much honoured by George III., who created him an English peer (Baron Rawdon) in March 1783.

In 1793 Lord Rawdon succeeded his father as earl of Moira. In 1794 he was sent with 10,000 men from Southampton to Ostend to reinforce the duke of York and the allies in Flanders. The march by which he effected a junction was considered extraordinary. In 1803 he was appointed commander-in-chief in Scotland, and in 1804 he married Flora Muir Campbell, countess of Loudon in her own right. He and Lady Loudon lived at Duddingston House near Edinburgh, where they were very popular. The opposition coming into power in 1806, Lord Moira, who had always voted with them, received the place of master general of the ordnance. He was now enabled to carry a philanthropic measure, of which from his first entry into the House of Lords he had been a great promoter, namely, the Debtor and Creditor Bill for relief of poor debtors. Ireland was another subject to which he had given particular attention: in 1797 there was published a Speech by Lord Moira on the Dreadful and Alarming State of Ireland. Lord Moira’s sound judgment on public affairs, combined with his military reputation and the honourable uprightness of his character, won for him a high position among the statesmen of the day, and he gained an additional prestige from his intimate relations with the prince of Wales. On two occasions, in 1809 and again in 1812 after the assassination of Percival, there were negotiations for placing him at the head of affairs. As a further mark of the regent’s regard Lord Moira received the order of the Garter, and in the same year was appointed governor-general and commander-in-chief of India. He landed at Calcutta, and assumed office in succession to Lord Minto in October 1813. He was now fifty-nine years of age. One of the chief questions which awaited him was that of relations with the Goorkha state of Nepaul. The Goorkhas, a brave and warlike little nation, failing to extend their conquests in the direction of China, had begun to encroach on territories held or protected by the East India Company; especially they had seized the districts of Bootwul and Seoraj, in the northern part of Oudh, and when called upon to relinquish these, they deliberately elected (April 1814) to go to war rather than do so. Lord Moira, having travelled through the northern provinces and fully studied the question, declared war against Nepaul (November 1814). The enemy’s frontier was 600 miles long, and Lord Moira, who directed the plan of the campaign, resolved to act offensively along the whole line. It was an anxious undertaking, because the native states of India were all watching the issue and waiting for any serious reverse to the English to join against them. At first all seemed to go badly, as the British officers too much despised the enemy, and the Sepoys were unaccustomed to mountain warfare, and thus alternate extremes of rashness and despondency were exhibited. But this rectified itself in time, especially through the achievements of General (afterwards Sir David) Ochterlony, who before the end of 1815 had taken all the Goorkha posts to the west, and early in 1816 was advancing victoriously within 50 miles of Katmandoo, the capital. The Goorkhas now made peace; they abandoned the disputed districts, ceded some territory to the English, and agreed to receive a British resident. Ever since they have faithfully kept these terms; the northern frontier of India has been securely fixed, and the Goorkhas have entirely kept aloof from the machinations of disaffected native states. For his masterly conduct of these affairs Lord Moira was created Marquis of Hastings in 1816.

He had now to deal with internal dangers. A treacherous combination of Mahratta powers was constantly threatening the continuance of British rule, under the guise of plausible assurances severally given by the peshwah, Sindia, Holkar, and other princes. At the same time the existence of the Pindhâree state was not only dangerous to the English, a3 being a warlike power always ready to turn against them, but it was a scourge to India itself. In 1816, however, the Pindhârees entered British territory in the Northern Circars, where they destroyed 339 villages. On this, permission was obtained to act for their suppression. Before the end of 1817 the preparations of Lord Hastings were completed, when the peshwah suddenly broke into war, and the British were opposed at once to the Mahratta and Pindhâree powers, estimated at 200,000 men and 500 guns. “The whole was utterly shattered in a brief campaign of four months (1817- 1818). The peshwah’s dominion had been annexed, and those of Sindia, Holkar, and the rajah of Berar lay at the mercy of the governor-general, and were saved only by his exceeding and honourable moderation. There was at last, after sixty years from the battle of Plassy, no question of the supremacy of British power in India, now more perfectly established and more effectively dominant than that of Aurungzebe.” The Pindhârees had ceased to exist, and peace and security had been substituted for misery and terror.

“It is a proud phrase to use,” said Lord Hastings, “but it is a true one, that we have bestowed blessings upon millions. Nothing can be more delightful than the reports I receive of the sensibility manifested by the inhabitants to this change in their circumstances. The smallest detachment of our troops cannot pass through that district without meeting everywhere eager and exulting gratulations, the tone of which proves them to come from glowing hearts. Multitudes of people have, even in this short interval, come from the hills and fastnesses in which they had sought refuge for years, and have reoccupied their ancient deserted villages. The ploughshare is again in every quarter turning up a soil which had for many seasons never been stirred, except by the hoofs of predatory cavalry.”

While the natives of India appreciated the resulta of Lord Hastings’s achievements, the court of directors grumbled at his having extended the British territory. They also disliked and opposed his measures for introducing education among the natives and his encouraging the freedom of the press. Posterity has, however, vindicated the policy of Lord Hastings in all respects. In 1819 he obtained the cession by purchase of the island of Singapore. In finance his administration was very successful, as notwithstanding the expenses of his wars he showed an annual surplus of two millions sterling. He laboured much at law reform, and he succeeded in greatly raising t 1 e status and character of the civil service of India. Lord and Lady Hastings by their stately and yet genial manners, and by their warm encouragement of literature and science, gave a high tone to the society of Calcutta. And he was the first governor-general to exhibit a personal interest in the exertions of the missionaries. Brilliant and beneficent as his career had been, Lord Hastings did not escape, any more than Clive, Warren Hastings, or Lord Wellesley, the assaults of unjust detraction. His last years of office were embittered by the discussions on a matter very notorious at the time, namely, the affairs of the banking-house of W. Palmer and Company. The whole affair was mixed up with insinuations against Lord Hastings, especially charging him with having been actuated by favouritism towards one of the partners in the firm. From imputations which were inconsistent with his whole character he has subsequently been exonerated. But while smarting under them he tendered his resignation in 1821, though he did not leave India till January 1823. He was much exhausted by the arduous and almost incredible labours which for more than nine years he had sustained. Among his characteristics it is mentioned that “his ample fortune absolutely sank under the benevolence of his nature;” and, so far from having enriched himself in the appointment of governorgeneral, he returned to England in circumstances which obliged him still to seek public employment. In 1824 he received the comparatively small post of governor of Malta, in which island he introduced many reforms and endeared himself to the inhabitants. He died in 1826, leaving a request that his right hand should be cut off and preserved till the death of the marchioness of Hastings, and then interred in her coffin.

No “Life” of the marquis of Hastings has appeared, hut a diary of his first tours in India, written for his children, has been published, and affords interesting indications of his character. For further particulars of his career see the Asiatic Journal for November 1823, and the √innuαZ Biography and Obituary for 1828; and for details of his Indian administration see Prinsep ’ s work cited above, Wilson’s continuation of Mill’s History of India, and other Indian histories. (A.. GR.)