235

'FORMERLY A

No. X.

JOHN SCOTT WARING, Esq.

FIELD-OFFICER IN THE SERVICE OF THE HO NOURABLE THE EAST INDIA COMPANY, AND LATELY A MEMBER OF THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT.

THE name of this gentleman has been scarcely mentioned of late years, and indeed he has taken but little share in any political proceedings of a recent date. There was a time, however, when he acted a very conspicuous part, and was continually before the public, either as a writer or a parliamentary

orator.

John Scott was born in or about the year 1737, or 1738. He is said to have been descended from a respectable Scottish family of the same name: and towards the latter part of his life he assumed the addendum of Waring, in consequence of one of his relatives having settled a considerable estate on him, in the county palatine of Chester.

At an early period of life, Mr. Scott entered into the service of the East India Company, and rose by degrees to the rank of a major. While a subaltern, quartered at Futtygur, he displayed a taste for writing, and, as we have heard, at one period attacked the administration of Mr. Hastings with a considerable degree of ability and effect. But they were afterwards reconciled, and a friendship equally warm and sincere took place between them. The governor-general, being certain that an impeachment had been determined on, selected Major Scott, who possessed his full confidence, as his agent and he accordingly repaired to England, as his precursor. They were both sensible that nothing could be effected without a seat in parliament; and the proper means for obtaining this were not wanting. The subject of this memoir accordingly

appeared in the House of Commons, as the authorised representative of Mr. Hastings, and displayed no common degree of zeal in his behalf; nor can it be denied, that on many trying occasions, he conducted himself with considerable ability and effect. On the other hand, he must be acknowledged to have displayed a certain degree of temerity, in the manner in which he commenced his career. It is well known, indeed, that in the character of champion to the governor-general, he was the first to throw down the gauntlet in the House of Commons, to set his enemies at defiance, and to dare them to the contest. How far this might have been prudent it is now difficult to decide; but certain it is, that he appears at least to have confirmed Mr. Burke in his original purpose, and perhaps rendered him still more determined, and even more personal and vituperative, than he otherwise might have been.

In this state of affairs the subject of this memoir, of course, was particularly anxious to have the public voice in his favour. Many of the first families in the kingdom were indebted to Mr. Hastings for a provision for their younger sons. The East India Company (supposing the accusation of his enemies to be true), had profited by his peculations, his rapacities, his wars of ambition, and still more by his wanton aggressions against the defenceless natives, under the immediate protection of Great Britain. Some of the ministers themselves were under obligations to him; and, in addition to all this, by means of presents he had gratified the cupidity, and excited the gratitude, of many distinguished personages. Thus, a numerous and powerful body was already interested in the defence of Mr. Hastings; while the public at large, listening to the tales of rapacity and injustice displayed towards the most distinguished princes and princesses in India, without regard either to rank, or age, or sex, at first leaned towards his

accusers.

In this state of affairs, it became necessary to conciliate those who were neutral, to confirm those who were wavering, to countenance his defenders, and to attack his foes.

All this was effected in a very able and efficacious manner, by the avowed agent of Mr. Hastings. Well aware of the immense power of the press (and it was never more fully demonstrated than in the course of this very impeachment), he subsidised several of the newspapers: some of the reviews, too, were at his devotion. Pamphlets innumerable were also written and circulated, either by himself or under his immediate direction; and thus the public mind was monthly, daily, and almost hourly occupied either by his own labours, or those of his adherents. When the contest became warmer, the speeches of each side were published, and perused with an eagerness now scarcely to be conceived; and while the periodical press incessantly groaned under the innumerable letters, paragraphs, puffs, and squibs, which issued from it. This must have proved an expensive operation; and a very curious bill of the sums paid on this occasion was published in the Morning Herald, in 1787. Of the total expenditure, it is now difficult to form any guess, but it could not have been much short of one-fourth of the law expenses, which alone amounted to 71,080. on the part of Mr. Hastings. Indeed, the avowed productions on the part of Major Scott himself, relative to India, amount to upwards of thirty in point of number, some of which are of considerable extent. Many of these, indeed, were published with his name, and some with his initials (J. S.), while others appeared under the signature of Asiaticus, Detector, &c. &c. &c. In addition to this, he rose frequently in the House of Commons in support of his patron; he mingled in all the debates relative to the affairs of Asia; and it was admitted by Mr. Pitt that his information was various, original, and authentic.

While Major Scott contended with a host of periodical writers, he was anxious that history should not record any. thing unworthy of his friend. Accordingly, in 1791, he ad-. dressed a letter to Mr. Doddesley, for the purpose of controverting some of the facts stated in the Annual Register for 1788. Perhaps his zeal was considerably heightened by the consideration that Mr. Burke had been, and still was supposed

to be the editor of that work. In 1796, he also addressed a letter to Mr. Belsham, who, in his history of the reign of George III. had treated Mr. Hastings, as he thought, with a ́ considerable degree of asperity and injustice, particularly in the character drawn of a great Asiatic Statesman. * He had

* The following is the portrait of the Ex-Governor-General of India, as depicted by the pencil of Mr. Belsham, vol. vii. p. 225. of the History of Great Britain: “ The political character of Mr. Hastings, on a cool and impartial review of his conduct, so forcibly impresses itself on the mind, that it can derive little aid from any adventitious illustration. Daring in the conception, and ardent in the prosecution of his designs,fertile in resources, and relying with confidence, and even with pride, on the strength of his own genius, his character acquired a certain stamp of diguity and superiority from the inflexibility of his temper, and the apparent force of his own conviction respecting the rectitude and propriety of his measures; to which must be added, that in his public despatches he possessed the dangerous art of giving plausibility to the most absurd and pernicious measures, by artful and imposing glosses, branching out sometimes into studied ambiguities, sometimes into bold assumptions, under a perpetual external show of ingenuousness, liberality, and candour.

"The numerous individuals returning in rapid succession from India, whom Mr. Hastings had engaged in his interest by various obligations, contributed also to enhance his reputation, by the high eulogiums which they almost universally bestowed upon his conduct; and in which, dazzled by the brilliant exterior of the Governor's administration, and unequal to the clear comprehension of an extensive and complex system, they were probably for the most part very sincere. The truth, however, is, that this man, for thirteen years the scourge of the East, and whom ignorance and folly have preposterously ranked with the SULLYS and CHATHAMS of the West, has never been, and never can become, the theme of discerning and rational panegyric.

"Not to speak of his total and flagrant disregard of the sole legitimate end and object of government,—the happiness of the governed, — his conduct will be found, in almost all its parts, and in the choice and prosecution of his own purposes, absurd, perplexed, capricious, and inconsequent. His course was one perpetual deviation from the straight and luminous path of political and sound rectitude; and his general reputation was supported chiefly by his habitual vigour of mind and personal courage, which were in him internally blended, and seemed to rise on some occasions even to the semblance of magnanimity.

"His exertions in the last war for the preservation of the Carnatic, which he had so wantonly and uselessly endangered, were generally and justly spoken of as highly meritorious; but even in this most splendid and boasted part of his political conduct, he could challenge only the praise of a madman, who first fires the house, and then labours strenuously to extinguish the flames.

"The administration of Mr. Hastings has been truly said, in the glowing expressions of eloquence, to exhibit a medley of meanness and outrage, of duplicity and depredation, of prodigality and oppression, of the most callous cruelty contrasted with the hollow affectation of liberality and good faith. The sordid system of commercial policy, to which all the arrangements and regulations of the Company are ultimately to be traced, was under his government carried to the utmost extent. Thus have nations been extirpated for a sum of money,· whole tracts of country laid waste to furnish an investment,princes expelled for the balance of an account, and a bloody sceptre wielded in one hand, in order to replenish the empty purse of mercantile mendicancy displayed in the other.'

pronounced, "That his defence, precipitately and prematurely delivered, was of no service to his cause, and contributed in a very slight and inadequate degree to the vindication of his character." While he reprobated the "languor" with which the trial was carried on, the writer lamented, "that the enthusiasm of those who wished and expected to have seen a great delinquent brought to speedy and exemplary justice, was fast changing to compassion for the man who seemed destined to live a life of impeachment, and to have been the object of a relentless persecution." If the Major was annoyed by the charges of delinquency, he was still more mortified at the affected compassion for the "criminal;" and he was consequently at great pains, on the present occasion, to enforce the innocence of his patron, and insists on the guilt of his numerous and relentless enemies.

"The concessions of Mr. Hastings himself are, indeed, occasionally very large and ample; for his views seldom seem to have extended beyond the precise object which he wished at the moment to compass. The ruinous effects of British perfidy, and British barbarity, in India, are very strongly and distinctly stated in his letters, dispatches, and minutes of council. In his minute of September 29, 1783, he says, "By a sacred and undeviating observance of every principle of public faith, the British dominion might by this time have acquired the means of its extension, through a virtual submission to its authority, to every region of Hindostan and Decan. - But the powers of India ALL dread the connection. The subjection of Bengal, the usurpations in the Carnatic, the licentious violation of the treaty with the Nizam, the effects of our connections with the Vizier, stand as TERRIBLE PRECEDENTS against us.'

"Yet as to himself, the primum mobile of the whole system, he declares in his famous minutes of defence, That he had the conscious satisfaction to see all his measures terminate in their designed objects; that his political conduct was invariably regulated by truth, justice, and good faith; and that he resigned his charge in a state of established peace and security, with all the sources of its abundance unimpaired, and even improved.'

"To reconcile these apparent incongruities, we are required, therefore, by a species of faith which can work miracles, to believe that there existed in India crimes without a criminal, oppressions without an oppressor, and tyranny without a tyrant. In fine, when we consider, with serious attention, the origin and progress of the British government in India, the friendship and generosity with which the English nation was received, and permitted to form establishments in that country, the black and base ingratitude with which those obligations were requited, and the unexampled, unprovoked, and unatoned excesses, which have been perpetrated on the princes and inhabitants of Hindostan Is it the weakness of superstition merely to tremble at the secret apprehension that some mighty vengeance is yet in store for this kingdom, such as finally, by the intervention of obvious causes, overwhelmed and subverted the proud, corrupt, and tyrannic empires of antiquity?"