Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

Sessions. 1803, 8vo.-12. Jurisconsult Exercitationes, vols. 1 and 2. 1811, 4to.-13. Institutes of the Laws of England. By Sir Edward Coke. Revised and corrected, with Notes, &c. By Francis Hargrave and Charles Butler, Esquires. 1818. 2 vols. 8vo.

Sir John Macpherson.

BORN A. D. 1767.-DIED A. D. 1821.

THIS eminent Indian statesman was the second son of the Rev. Mr Macpherson of Slate, in the isle of Skye. He received his university education at St Andrews and at Edinburgh.

Having resolved to push his fortune as an adventurer in the Indian army, he sailed with this view in an East Indiaman, commanded by his maternal uncle. On their arrival off Mangalore, they found the nabob of Arcot besieging that place in conjunction with a body of English troops. A message was sent to the English vessel, begging the aid of two hundred sailors to assist in storming the place, which was granted, and young Macpherson being placed at their head by his uncle, was the first who ascended the breach next morning. This fortunate introduction to public notice laid the foundation of his future fortune. The nabob of Arcot became his patron, and soon made him his chief confidant and adviser.

In 1781, after a residence in England of several years, Mr Macpherson went out to India in the capacity of a member of the supreme council of Bengal; and on the retirement of Hastings he held the office ad interim of governor-general of India. The following letter which he addressed to an old friend, Dr Adam Ferguson, a short time subsequent to his accession to the governorship, sets his character in a pleasing light:

"CALCUTTA, 12th January, 1786.

"MY DEAR FRIEND,-When I was but a company's writer in the Carnatic, I remember I sent you a small bill, which you told me you accepted with pleasure, as it came from me, and you bought French clothes with it, being then on a visit to Paris. I have been near a year governor-general of India, and four years a supreme counsellor, and I have sent you nothing but a little Madeira. Yet you are the friend next to my heart, and your interests are dearer to me than my own, as they involve the concerns of a numerous family, depending on the state of your health. If I have been thus inattentive to your situation, you are yourself the cause; for to you am I indebted for those rules of duct in my public trusts, which have bound my generosity to you, or to my own private interests within narrow limits. You have been occasionally informed of the line pursued by me since I left Europe; the situation in which I found affairs, my labours to retrieve them, and the disbursement of my own income in various attentions to those who were recommended to me, and whom I could not oblige at the public exIf the line I have pursued was not necessary from its satisfactions to my own mind, the example of it was a sine qua non to enable me, when affairs devolved upon me, to reduce the expense of this col

pense.

con

ony about a million sterling per annum, and to silence the cries of thousands, who might otherwise have just grounds for charging me with partiality and selfishness. I have followed your maxims in the practice of affairs upon, perhaps, the greatest theatre of affairs!-if the greatness of affairs is founded in the numbers of men, and the extent of their interests; the concerns to be extricated or forfeited; the wealth that might have been acquired, and the consequences that might thereby ensue to individuals, tribes, and nations. The events that hinged upon

my ideas and conduct, four years ago, were more important than those which I can now influence, though I stand at the head, and in absolute charge, of all our affairs in India! It is, my friend, one-and-twenty years since I began under you, the rudiments of these affairs; and as there is no period of my life that I look to with such a conscious sensation of joy and pride, as that which I passed with you and our noble pupils, so to you is due the account, which I can in truth give, and which I am bound to make to you: it must be interesting to you, and it is for the benefit of our native school, and perhaps of society in general, that I should enable you to know the result, that you might hereafter be the more confirmed in your system! I have amply experienced the truth of three of your favourite positions. First, That the pursuits of an active mind are its greatest happiness when they are directed to good objects, which unite our own happiness with that of our friends, and the general advantage of society.' Hence the first success in the Carnatic in 1767,-the subsequent efforts in London in 1769,—the return to India in 1771,—the visit to Europe in 1777,-the intercourse with men in business, the friendships of the ministers, and Lord North's selection of me for my trust in 1781, &c., in the supreme council. I have likewise experienced, that he who has not been in contest with his fellow-creatures knows but half of the human heart.' But such are the necessary taxes of occupation, of business, and perhaps of life. Thirdly, That all that rests with us individually, is to act our own parts to the best of our ability, and to endeavour to do good for its own sake, independently of events, disappointments, or sufferings.'

[ocr errors]

"Under these impressions I have acted, and I now act; and if the India company, and the ministers, and the legislature, extend their views to the necessity of affairs, and to the future prosperity of Great Britain and India, as they stand united; and if they will adopt the plans I have laid before them, I am steady in believing that the greatest benefits to Great Britain, from Thule to the Land's End; and to Asia, from Cape Comorin to Tartary, may flow from the practical operation of the commercial and political systems I have opened for the progressive adoption of the empire. The outlines are clear and strong, as well as the ground of the operations themselves. Look at the map, and see the field of empire, marked by the Thibet Hills, from Tartary to Chittagong; by the Ganges, from its source to its embrace of the ocean; and by opposite chains of hills, and of wild tribes from Balasore to the Jumna.

"This empire asks nothing from Great Britain but protection, and some staples; and it sends to Europe, every year, about twenty-five Indiamen, loaded with the industry and the productions of its extraordinary soil: each ship is worth £100,000, one with another. The

improvements made in navigation, and the knowledge of climates, and the care of health, enable Great Britain to carry on her trade, if she would adopt a liberal plan for it, on a footing to employ a fleet in going and returning (including China and the coasts of the Great Peninsula) of about seventy ships, now equal in size to 50-gun ships: why not to 64 and 74? Commerce would then create a navy for Britannia; at least, such as would command the Indian seas! And, as in King William's days, the first great operations of our state began by converting our debts into funds, or property, by regular payments of the interest; so we may here employ the present interests of our debts to be a medium for remitting the whole to Britain in an additional investment of goods; the duties and customs of which will equal the land-tax at four shillings in the pound.

"Upon this system, which necessity forced us to begin here in 1782, (by providing what is called a subscription investment, and drawing bills upon the proceeds of the goods,) India was saved from the jaws of war, and the chains of a little monopolist policy, which forced all extra-remittances to Britain, through the channels of foreign trade, and which paid their tributes of customs to Lisbon and Copenhagen, at a rate that has turned the exchange from Copenhagen against England to about £18 per cent. But my system does more; it pours in upon Britain those streams of friendship, and of aid, which every officer, civil and military, in these provinces, wishes to send, partially, to his rela-' tions; and which, in the general reciprocal remittance and receipt, give the British heart, on this and your side of the ocean, its most delightful exercises; and which gladden every village and place, from the cottages of the Isle of Skye to the palaces of London!

"I think, still a greater scene opens by this commercial intercourse, if our rivals in Europe wished but for a proper share of it. It would embrace much of the repose of the universe in the happy communications of all the inhabitants of the globe, from the sources of the Mississippi to those of the Ganges; and from West to East, till the East and the West are united.

"I have at this moment, at Calcutta, ambassadors from Tidona, in the Eastern seas; from Thibet; from all the states of India; and from Timiu Shaw, who is crossing the Indus: and, as Manilla is opening her trade, I hope to hear direct from Lima, before I leave India, and to make the Incas of Peru acquainted with the Brahmin rajahs on the banks of the Ganges. Curious are, besides, the treasures in literature, and the oblivious history of nations, that are dawning upon us from the researches of Sir William Jones and others, in Sanscrit, Arabic, and Persian; even Anacreon's and Euclid's best and happiest labours may have been long asleep in the translations of this country. And what seems to complete our prospect of elegant and useful information is, that the present governor of Chinsura, who was for seven years in Japan, has brought us the wonders of that country: their encyclopædia is in his hands; and, in some of the arts of life, and of government, those islanders of Asia, those Anglo-Asiatics, have left all other nations far behind.

"While devoting all my moments, that are my own, to such general considerations, I have perused, and am perusing again, your story of the Roman state, and their rule of India. Thanks, thanks, my dear

friend. But one ambition remains; it is, to converse with you at your farm on these affairs. Has life in reserve for us this happiness? or, is our expectation of it enough? May I be able to meet you there, worthy, in every respect, of your esteem, as of your affection. And, is it possible to go through the remaining acts of my life here, with progressive dignity and success? Hitherto, all is as you could wish; but all may not be at the farm as you wish. I know the feu-duty embarrasses you; and the dignitas, without the otium, may be there. Receive, then, the inclosed bill upon my masters, the India company: let the amount of it be sunk to discharge the annual feu-duty of the farm during your life and Mrs Ferguson's, and the lives of all your children and their descendants;-it will be a future business to buy off the feuduty altogether.

"At present, I can send you no more; and should fate have deprived me of the future happiness of knowing that you can be conscious of this little attention, those nearest and dearest to you I must consider as what remains to me of you: to them I address this letter also."

Sir John's government was terminated by the removal of Earl Cornwallis. He soon after returned to England, where he spent the remainder of his life. He died in January, 1821.

test.

Robert, Marquess of Londonderry.

BORN A. D. 1789.--DIED A. D. 1822.

THE Right Honourable Robert Stewart, Marquess of Londonderry, Viscount Castlereagh, was born on the 18th of June, 1789. His father, Robert Stewart, first marquess of Londonderry, was advanced to that dignity in 1816. The subject of this memoir received his early educa tion at Armagh under Archdeacon Hurrock. In 1786 he was entered of St John's college, Cambridge. His youth was little distinguished by his attachment to letters, but he early gave many proofs of that firmness or rather obstinacy of character which afterwards distinguished him. On coming of age he stood for the representation of the county of Down, and carried his election after a severe and very expensive conOn the hustings he pledged himself to support the cause of parliamentary reform,-a pledge which he afterwards found it convenient to maintain was fully redeemed by his exertions to procure the right of voting to Catholics. The first debate in which he took a part was on the question of the independent right of Ireland to trade with India, irrespective of the British East India company's monopoly. He adopted the affirmative side of the question, and in this his debut obtained the decided approbation of the opposition in the Irish house of commons. For a time he promised to become a valuable auxiliary to the liberal party. He presided at public dinners where they drank 'Our Sovereign Lord the People;' he supported Grattan in his motion for reform; and characterized the system pursued by government as "a vicious system which was fast driving the public mind into a state of agitation." At last, on the recall of Earl Fitzwilliam, he suddenly turned round and

[graphic][ocr errors][merged small][subsumed]
« AnteriorContinuar »