began again to manifest itself in the native community. A.D. The cause of Doorjun Sal became popular when it was 1825 known that he intended to enter the lists with the

Company's Government. Rajpoots, Jauts, Mahrattas, Afghans, and not a few of our native subjects crowded to his standard, and an army of 25,000 men was speedily collected for the defence of the place. All the members of Council concurred in opinion that in these circumstances we were bound in honour and policy to support the cause of the youth we had invested with the purple against the usurper, but Lord Amherst still continued to hesitate. Happily Sir Charles Metcalfe arrived at Calcutta at this juncture on his way to Delhi as the successor of Sir David, and in a masterly minute pointed out that as the paramount state in India, we could not be indifferent spectators of anarchy therein without ultimately giving up the country again to the pillage and confusion from which we had rescued it; that a vigorous exercise of our power would be likely to bring back the minds of men to a proper tone, and that the capture of Bhurtpore, if effected in a glorious manner, would do us more honour by removing the hitherto unfaded impression created by our former failure than any other event that could be conceived. Lord Amherst gracefully surrendered his opinion to that of Sir Charles, and it was resolved, if remonstrance with Doorjun failed, to resort to arms.

To the astonishment of the princes of India who believed that the Burmese war had absorbed all the resources of Government, an army of 20,000 men with 100 Capture of heavy ordnance and mortars suddenly sprung Bhurtpore. up in the midst of them. Throughout India it was remembered that Bhurtpore was the only fortress which the British Government had besieged and failed to capture, and the eyes of all India were fixed upon the second siege, not perhaps, without a latent hope that it might be as unsuccessful as the first. The head-quarters of Lord Combermere, the Commander-in-Chief, were established before it on the 10th December. Thirty-six mortars and forty-eight pieces of heavy ordnance played upon the mud walls for many days without making any impression or creating a practicable breach. A great mine was at length completed, and charged with 10,000 pounds of powder. The explosion took place on the 18th January, and seemed to 1826 shake the foundations of the earth, while enormous masses of hardened earth and blocks of timber, mingled with

A.D.

heads, legs and arms, were sent flying into the air, and 1826 the sky was darkened with volumes of smoke and dust. Of the usurper's army, 6,000 were said to have fallen during the siege and the casualties on the side of the English were about 1,000. Doorjun Sal endeavoured to make his escape, but was captured and sent to join the assemblage of disinherited princes at Benares, where he passed twenty-five years on an allowance of 500 rupees a month. The boy raja was then placed on the throne by Sir Charles Metcalfe and Lord Combermere, but the laurels of Bhurtpore were tarnished by the rapacity of the military authorities. The siege was undertaken to expel a usurper, and restore the lawful prince to his rights, but the whole of the state jewels and treasure was seized by the victors to the extent of forty-eight lacs of rupees, and divided among themselves as prize-money, Lord Combermere appropriating six lacs to himself. The proud walls which had bid defiance to the hero of Delhi and Laswaree were levelled with the ground. The capture of the fort produced a profound sensation, as Sir Charles Metcalfe had predicted, throughout India; and, combined with the submission of Burmah, dissolved the sanguine hopes of the disaffected, and restored the prestige of the Company. Lord Amherst was advanced to the dignity of an earl, not of Bhurtpore, his brightest achievement, but of Aracan, the most disastrous of his expeditions.

1823

to

1928

1828

The financial result of his administration was calamitous. The wealth left in the treasury by Lord Hastings was dissipated, the annual surplus turned into a Finances. deficit, and an addition of ten crores made to the public debt. On his arrival, and while new to the country and the community, he was led by the superior officers of Government to continue those truculent proceedings against the press which they had origiThe press. nated; but it was not long before he adopted a more generous policy, and on his departure was complimented by the journals in Calcutta "on the liberality and even magnanimity with which he had tolerated the free expression of public opinion on his own individual measures, when he had the power to silence them with a "stroke of his pen." He embarked for England in February, and Mr. Butterworth Bayley, the senior member of Council, assumed charge of the Government.

66

SECTION II.

LORD WILLIAM BENTINCK'S ADMINISTRATION-MILITARY

OPERATIONS-NATIVE STATES-RUNJEET SING.

Bentinck.

THE stigma unjustly inflicted on Lord William Bentinck's character by his abrupt removal from the Government of Madras in 1806, was at length effaced by his Lord appointment to the office of Governor-General. William He was sworn in at the India House in July 1827, while his relative, Mr. Canning, who had promoted his nomination, was prime minister; but his lamented 1827 death soon after brought into power those who had opposed his elevation, and Lord William Bentinck suspended his departure till he was assured that the new ministry did not object to his appointment; hence he did not reach Calcutta before the 4th July, 1828. With his advent commenced a new and beneficent era in the history of the Company, marked by a bold and energetic improvement in the institutions of the state, although his administration did not open under favourable circumstances. Reduction of The Burmese war had not only saddled the allowances. treasury with an additional debt of ten crores, but created an annual deficit of a crore of rupees, and Lord William 1828 Bentinck was constrained to enter upon the unpopular duty of retrenchment. Two committees were appointed to investigate the increase of expenditure, and to suggest the means of curtailing it. The sweeping reductions which the Court of Directors had already made in the strength of the army, left little for the military committee to suggest, except the diminution of individual allowances, though they were in no case excessive, and, in many cases, inadequate. The civil department afforded a more legitimate field for revision; some offices were abolished, a few were doubled up, and the income of others was curtailed; but the total reductions did not affect the aggregate allowances of the service to a greater extent than six per cent. It was still the best paid service in the world, in the enjoyment of an annual income of ninety lacs, which divided, as it was, among 416 officers, gave each of the members an average allowance of 20,000 rupees a year; but even the moderate contraction of allowances suggested by the committee and adopted by Lord William Bentinck, subjected him to indignities which severely taxed his habitual equanimity.

A.D.

The half

Of these economical measures, none excited so much bitterness of feeling as the half batta order. Soon after the beginning of the century the supplementary batta order. allowance of full batta was granted to the officers when in cantonments in the lower provinces. The Court of Directors objected to the arrangement, and directed Lord Hastings, and subsequently Lord Amherst, to reduce the amount by one half, but they referred the order back to England for reconsideration, when it was repeated in a more peremptory tone. The latest despatch reached Calcutta soon after the arrival of Lord William, and in obedience to the Court's orders, he issued a notification in November, 1828 reducing the allowance one half at all stations within 400 miles of Calcutta. The order raised a flame in the army which at one time created the apprehension of a fourth European mutiny. One officer went so far as to assert that if an enemy were to make his appearance in the field, he did not believe there was a single officer who would give the order to march, or a single regiment which would obey it. The insults inflicted on the Governor-General by the officers of the army rivalled those of the civil service, and were more severe than any of his predecessors had ever experienced. Lord Combermere, the Commander-inChief, prevented the organisation of representative committees, as in the mutiny of 1796, but he did not hesitate to pronounce the order unjust; and the Court of Directors declared that they would have superseded him if he had not resigned the service. Lord William Bentinck also considered the order unnecessary, unjust, and impolitic, but he felt that it was beyond his power to suspend the execution of it after the Court of Directors had, for the third time, insisted upon its being carried into effect, without assuming that the Government in Calcutta was the supreme power in the empire. The Court of Directors denounced the tone of the memorials presented to them by the officers as subversive of all military discipline, and, with the full concurrence of the Duke of Wellington, signified their determination to enforce the order at all hazards; indeed, considering the pass at which matters had arrived, they had no other alternative. But the reduction was an egregious blunder; and it appears strange that so astute a body as the Directors should have risked the attachment and confidence of their army for a paltry saving of less than two lacs a year; and it is still more surprising that for the thirty years in which they continued

to administer the Government, they had not the magnanimity to rescind the order, even as a graceful acknowledgment of the services subsequently performed by the army. in twenty hard-fought battles.

The native princes had always been in the habit of making grants of land to individuals and to ecclesiastical establishments free from the payment of rent. Rent free Some of these religious endowments and grants tenures. to charities were held sacred by superstitious chiefs, but in numerous instances they were resumed, both in the Deccan and in Hindostan, on each succession to the throne, and sometimes during the same reign. In the confusion created by the dissolution of the Mogul power, this royal prerogative was usurped by the governors of provinces. On assuming the management of the revenue the Government in Calcutta announced that all grants made previous to 1765 should be deemed valid; but, as there was no register of them, the rajas, zemindars, farmers, and revenue officers, set to work to fabricate and antedate new deeds, and it was subsequently asserted that a tenth of the land revenues had thus been alienated from the state during the infancy of our Government. The revenue settlement of Lord Cornwallis reserved the right of resuming these tenures when their validity had been investigated and disallowed. The overworked collector to whom the duty of the investigation was committed, found himself thwarted at every step by his own mercenary officers, who were in the pay of the occupants; he became lukewarm in the work, and it was necessary either to abandon the pursuit of this lost revenue, or to adopt more effectual measures to recover it. Three A.D. weeks before the arrival of Lord William Bentinck, a regulation was passed, appointing commissioners selected from the ablest men in the service, to hear and finally to determine appeals regarding these tenures from the decisions of the collectors, who were thus stimulated into greater activity. These energetic proceedings gave great offence to those affected by them, who pleaded, and not without reason, that the difficulty of substantiating their claims bad increased with the lapse of time, that many documents had disappeared by the effects of the climate and the ravages of white ants, and that lands which might have been fraudulently obtained several generations back, had since been bought bona fide at high prices. Though the holders were in no cases dispossessed, but simply required to pay rent to the state, the assessment of their

1821