1806.] PITT'S FAILING HEALTH. 451 which was succeeded by a total debility of digestion. At the end of the month lord Castlereagh went to Bath to tell him the fatal end of all his great plans. "It struck Pitt so deeply, and found him in such an enfeebled state, that he certainly never recovered it."* By slow journeys, attended by his physician, sir Walter Farquhar, he arrived at his villa at Putney, so emaciated as not to be known. 'On the 13th he saw lord Castlereagh and lord Hawkesbury for the last time. Malmesbury says that after this interview he said to the Bishop of Lincoln, putting his hand on his stomach, "I feel something here that reminds me I shall never recover." On the 13th he saw lord Wellesley, who had just returned from India; and he fainted, according to Malmesbury, before Wellesley left the room. Lord Brougham gives an interesting account of this interview, but with a material variation: "This, their last interview, was in the villa on Putney Heath, where he died a few days after. Lord Wellesley called upon me there many years after; it was then occupied by my brother-in-law, Mr. Eden, whom I was visiting. His lordship showed me the place where these illustrious friends sat. Mr. Pitt was, he said, much emaciated and enfeebled, but retained his gaiety and his constitutionally sanguine disposition; he expressed his confident hopes of recovery. In the adjoining room he lay a corpse the ensuing week; and it is a singular and a melancholy circumstance, resembling the stories told of William the Conqueror's deserted state at his decease, that some one in the neighbourhood having sent a message to inquire after Mr. Pitt's state, he found the wicket open, then the door of the house, and, nobody answering the bell, he walked through the rooms till he reached the bed on which the minister's body lay lifeless, the sole tenant of the mansion of which the doors a few hours before were darkened by crowds of suitors alike obsequious and importunate, the vultures whose instinct haunts the carcasses only of living ministers”+ The doors darkened by crowds of suitors, only a few hours before his death, appears to be a flight of imagination. George Rose came to Putney on the 15th, and there learnt that lord Castlereagh and lord Hawkesbury had insisted on seeing Mr. Pitt on points of public business, of the most serious importance, which interview visibly affected him. He saw Mr. Rose for five minutes on the 15th. From that time, Rose says, 66 no one had access to him but the Bishop (of Lincoln) and the physicians.' On the 23rd, Rose enters in his Diary, that about seven in the morning he received a note " to tell me that my most inestimable friend quitted the world about four o'clock. saw no one after the Bishop had taken notes of his last Hester (his niece), who went to his bedside in the evening. He at first did not know her; but afterwards he did, and blessed her: nor did he utter another word, except that about half-an-hour before he breathed his last, the servant heard him say,' My country! oh, my country!" The bishop went away from Putney Heath, as soon as the dreaded event of this winter morning was over, before the busy world was stirring. We ourselves, long ago, heard the story of the deserted house, with a sufficient explanation. Nothing more * Malmesbury, vol. iv. p. 352. "Statesmen of the Time of George III.," vol. iii. p. 312. He desires, but lady 452 DEATH OF PITT. [1806. natural than that the few servants should have gone from Putney Heath upon the necessary duties of such mournful occasions, and have left the doors of the solitary house unfastened. William Pitt died on the 23rd of January. It was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the day on which he first entered Parliament. And this was the end of his struggle for thirteen years against the power of revolutionary France, against the Directory, against the Consulate, against the Empire. He "died of a broken heart," says his devoted friend, Wilberforce. "The accounts from the armies struck a death-blow within." On the 26th of January the leader of these armies entered Paris, after a victorious campaign of three months, to receive the homage of a nation which saw in the glory of one man a recompense for all the miseries of the Republic; a nation which believed that to make France mistress of the world was to make Frenchmen prosperous and happy. The great parliamentary career of William Pitt commences in 1781.* His supreme command of the political action of his country commences in 1783. In 1784, Gibbon wrote from Lausanne, "A youth of five-andtwenty, who raises himself to the government of an empire by the power of genius and the reputation of virtue, is a circumstance unparalleled in history, and, in a general view, is not less glorious to the country than to himself." + We have traced the history of this great orator and statesman from the brilliancy of his life's day-spring to the clouds and darkness of its evening; and, we trust, in no unfriendly spirit-rather with a profound admiration of intellectual and moral qualities such as the sons of men are rarely endowed with. Nevertheless, we have not repressed a conviction that, if his peaceadministration was as eminently sagacious as it was safe and prosperous, his war-administration and his domestic policy from 1793 gave few occasions in which to display the ascendancy of his genius in high and blameless deeds, however surpassing his power of justifying his measures by majestic and all-prevailing words. He was indeed "the top of eloquence." We cannot deny that he was also the most ardent amongst "lovers of their country;" the farthest elevated above all mercenary objects. Those who affected to be of his school were really, with one or two exceptions, not his pupils. Had Pitt lived to behold the war triumph, he might again have vindicated his claim to be a great peace minister and a sincere social reformer. * Ante, vol. vi. p. 433. Ante, vol. vii. 139. "Life of Pitt," by Earl Stanhope, vol. i. p. 237; 1861. India-Attacks in Parliament upon Marquis Wellesley-The Subsidiary system-The Mahratta Chiefs The Mahratta War-General Lake-General Wellesley-The Battle of AssyeEnd of the Campaign-Holkar-Famine in India-Mutiny at Vellore-Administration of Grenville and Fox-Financial Measures-Volunteers-Acquittal of Lord Melville--The Princess of Wales-Mr. Fox and the King-Declining health of Mr. Fox-Slave TradeProgress of the cause of Abolition-Thomas Clarkson-Negotiations for Peace-End of the Negotiations-Death of Mr. Fox-Confederation of the Rhine-Prussia-Aggressions of Napoleon-Murder of Palm-Joseph Bonaparte, king of Naples-British Army in Calabria-Battle of Maida-Capture of Buenos Ayres by Sir Home Popham-Its recapture. TWELVE days after the marquis Wellesley had seen his great friend for the last time, and had felt that the voice would soon be mute which could best defend him from the enemies that were gathering around, Mr. James Paull, who had aspired to sit for Westminster, moved for papers, upon which he purposed to ground grave charges against the late governor-general of India. He had to lament, he said, in common with every man who had turned his thoughts to India, and in common with all the nations of Hindustan, that lord Wellesley's spirit of aggrandizement, his love of power, and insatiable ambition, had led him into errors and mistakes that had shook to their base 454 THE SUBSIDIARY SYSTEM. (1799-1806. our very existence in India, and to consequent acts of great injustice and oppression. The Indian policy of Wellesley had been somewhat too bold. for the timid expediency of the Addington government. The prime minister told Mr. Henry Wellesley that the administration "could not support the Governor-General against the Court of Directors," and that as a private friend he could not advise him to stay beyond the year 1803.† Before that year had closed, the statesmanship of lord Wellesley, and the military exploits of his brother Arthur and of general Lake, had established the supremacy of the British in India, "under a combination of circumstances in the highest degree critical and difficult." Such were the terms addressed to Wellesley by the Directors of the East India Company in 1837. In 1805, no Indian administrator was ever more the object of their jealousy and suspicion. Arthur Wellesley returned to England in September of that year. He thus writes to his brother after an interview with lord Castlereagh: "He lamented in strong terms your differences with the Court of Directors, and entered with some detail upon the causes of them. These were principally the old story-disobedience of their orders, contempt of their authority, neglect to write to them to inform them of the most important events, and declared dislike of their persons." They feared that he would endeavour to overturn their authority when he returned home.‡ After the fall of Tippoo, and the partition of the Mysore territory in 1799, § lord Wellesley steadily pursued the policy which is distinguished as the Subsidiary System. Its principle was to form treaties with native rulers; in compliance with which, a military force, under our own command, was to be maintained at the expense of the native prince; and the control of state affairs was to be vested in the British Resident, with the exception of all that related to the domestic arrangements of the sovereign, who preserved the regal pomp without the regal power. This subsidiary system was warmly opposed in the British Parliament, as unjust and tyrannical. Its defence is succinctly stated by one who has been a constant enemy of all injustice and tyranny: "We had been compelled to interfere in their affairs, and to regulate the succession to their thrones, upon each successive discovery of designs hostile to us, nay, threatening our very existence, the subversion of all the fabric of useful and humane and enlightened polity which we had erected on the ruins of their own barbarous system, and particularly the restriction of the cruel despotism under which the native millions had formerly groaned." || In 1800, a subsidiary treaty was formed with the Nizam, who ceded all his Mysorean territories in exchange for aid and protection. In 1801 the nephew of the deceased nabob of Arcot was raised to the nominal throne, renouncing in favour of the British all the powers of government. The Subahdar of Oude, and the Peishwa, came also under subordination to the British authority. After the rupture of the peace of Amiens, a new danger had arisen, in a confederacy of Mahratta chiefs, assisted by French arms and French influence. The war of England against * Hansard, vol. v. col. 564. + Wellington's "Supplementary Despatches," vol. iv. p. 339. Lord Brougham-"Sketches of Statesmen," vol. iii. p. 308. 1799-1806.] THE MAHRATTA CHIEFS. 455 Napoleon was in effect to be carried on in a war with the Mahrattas. In the districts watered by the Godavery and the Poorna, were the qualities of a great captain to be displayed, which, a few years later, were to drive the legions of Napoleon from the Tagus to the Garonne. The warlike race of the Mahrattas were the lords of a population of forty millions, who occupied the fertile provinces extending in length from Delhi to the Toombuddra, and in breadth from the bay of Bengal to the gulf of Cambay. There were five Mahratta chieftains, whose collective military force amounted to 300,000, of which 100,000 were cavalry. The authority of the nominal sovereign, the Rajah of Sattara, was in the hands of the Peishwa, or prime minister, whose office was hereditary. He held his court at Poonah. The ostensible but feeble head of the Mahratta chiefs, he generally looked for aid to the British to defend him from his ambitious rivals, but he had sometimes intrigued to throw off the British connexion and form an alliance with the French. At the beginning of the century, the great chief Holkar was at war with the equally valorous chief Scindia. Holkar, to strengthen his own power and destroy an ally of his rival, attacked the Peishwa, who fled from Poonah after a signal defeat. It was then that he called the British to his aid, with whom he concluded the treaty of Bassein, on the last day of December, 1802. General Wellesley marched six hundred miles, from Seringapatam to Poonah, in the worst season of the year; drove out the Mahrattas; and reinstated the Peishwa in his capital. Holkar now turned to his old rival Scindia, to coalesce with him against the Peishwa, the Nizam, and the British. Directing the military operations of Scindia was a clever Frenchman, M. Perron, who had under him a large army of infantry disciplined in the European manner, many thousand cavalry, and a well appointed train of artillery. Bhoonsla, the Rajah of Berar (or Rajah of Nagpoor), joined the alliance of Scindia and Holkar. The fifth Mahratta chieftain was Guickwar, and his territory was Guzerat, where Scindia had some possessions and great power and influence. Guickwar took no part in the approaching contest. For some time after the Peishwa had been restored, negotiations were going on between the British government and Scindia and the Rajah of Berar. They professed friendship, but it soon became clear that they were confederates with Holkar, and were depending for assistance upon Perron. The Nizam was known to be dying; and it was one of the objects of these chieftains to arrange the succession so as to aggrandize their own power. It was thus necessary to make war upon this confederacy, which threatened the security of the British dominion in India as much, if not more, than the hostility of Tippoo. There was the same danger, as in his case, of an alliance with France on the part of the Mahrattas. Pondicherry had been given up to France by the Treaty of Amiens. When the Mahratta war broke out, the rupture of that treaty was not known. The vicinity of Pondicherry to the Mahratta country required the greatest vigilance. Whilst negotiations with the Mahratta chiefs were still in progress, the news came of the renewal of the war. A French force attempted to land at Pondicherry, and were made prisoners. Providing against hostilities upon a great scale, the GovernorGeneral decided upon the plan of a campaign, in which the rare faculty of organizing the co-operating movements of troops acting upon different points ensured the same success as had attended the campaigns of Napoleon. One |