A BLUNDERING TREATY OF PEACE

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to strengthen either of these two very formidable neighbours at the expense of the other, were compelled to offend both of them by refusing to interfere in any manner whatever. The result was that the Marathas inflicted upon Hyder Ali some humiliating defeats, which he attributed to the faithless desertion of him by the English, and that he became thenceforward a vindictive enemy, watching for an occasion, which he soon found, of gratifying his resentment.

WE

CHAPTER X

ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANIZATION

1770-1773

E have now reached the threshold of that important period in the political history of British India which is covered by the long government of Warren Hastings, from 1772 to 1785. It was in this period that the contest for supremacy between the English and the military powers of India began in earnest, that the attention of Parliament became fixed upon Indian affairs, and that the organization of English government in India was for the first time seriously attempted.

When Lord Clive left in 1767, the Company had become the real rulers of Bengal; but although their position was still dissembled under the cloak of a nominal Nawabship, the disguise was worn almost threadbare. In Calcutta and Madras, the Presidency Councils were exercising some direct authority beyond the town limits, and very large indirect power, as commanders of the troops and collectors of the revenue, throughout Bengal and the Karnatic. Yet in Bengal, although the whole public income was paid to the Company, they were under strict orders from London to

A NATIVE INDIAN PRINCE AND HIS COURT, WITH TWO EUROPEANS.

BENGAL VIRTUALLY RULED BY THE COMPANY 219

abstain from all open interference with the rest of the administration. They disbursed to a Deputy Nawab (for the Nawab himself was now a mere pensioner) the costs of establishments; and they left the whole executive and judicial government nominally in his hands. Verelst, who succeeded Clive at Calcutta, writes that the President and Council "are repeatedly and peremptorily forbidden to avow any public authority in our names over the native officers, and enjoined to retain our primitive characters of merchants with the most scrupulous delicacy."

The consequences were but too evidently exemplified in the decline of commerce and cultivation, the diminution of specie, and the general distress; for the native officers were uncontrolled, while the Company received an immense revenue without possessing the means of protecting the people who paid it. Against such a system Verelst protested generously; and a futile attempt to mitigate its evils was made by appointing a few English servants of the Company to supervise the native agency.

It was not, however, until 1773 that the executive and judicial administration of the country was placed on a regular, though imperfect, footing by parliamentary ordinance. Up to this time, Anglo-Indian annals have recorded the vicissitudes of a contest, first, be tween commercial companies; next, between maritime nations; latterly between one powerful Company, representing the successful nation, and the native Indian princes. This latest stage of the contest was in reality