THE INDIA-HOUSE DISCUSSIONS.' 91 -all the strategy-were on the side of Hastings and the House. Metcalfe's cause was left to itself. But it needed no other backing than that which its own merits secured for it. There were friends of Charles Metcalfe in England who were prepared to "qualify" and to take their place in the Court of Proprietors for the express purpose of defending him, if the debates should take a turn unfavorable to his cause. But there was no need of any such demonstrations of friendship. The published papers had told their own story, and it needed not that much should be said in elucidation of them. He was not, however, without able and vigorous defenders in the HouseMr. Poynder, Mr. Carruthers, Mr. Freshfield, Mr. Weeding, Mr. Impey, and others, were all earnest in their applause of the manly conduct of the Resident; and his old friend Mr. Trant, who had been in the same house with him at Eton, who had entered the Company's service cotemporaneously with him, who had worked beside him in Lord Wellesley's office, and had been one of the unforgotten fraternity of "Howe Boys," stood up with affectionate enthusiasm to do honor to the noble character of his comrade.* The result of the six days' debate was the Some passages of Mr. Trant's speech are worthy of quotation:“His gallant friend (Sir John Doyle) had said that Sir Charles Metcalfe was fitter to be Resident in Bedlam than in Hyderabad. Now he need not remind the honorable and gallant officer of what an illustrious person had said, when he was told that General Wolfe was mad: 'If he is mad,' said that illustrious individual, 'I wish he would bite some other generals.' He would say it, and he wished it most sincerely, if Sir C. Metcalfe was mad, that the Company had a great many more such mad servants. He congratulated the Company in having such an useful madman in their employ; and he should not be sorry if he bit a few of their civil servants. The gallant general had informed them that he was acquainted with the Marquis of Hastings during a period of forty years' du discomfiture of the Hastings-and-Rumbold party. And Metcalfe's reputation in both countries stood higher than it had ever stood before.* As I write, more than thirty years have elapsed since these painful discussions were closed; and any further than is necessary for the illustration of Metcalfe's character, I do not desire to re-open them. That which I have sought to bring prominently forward is the noble effort which the Resident made to stop what he called "the plunder of the Nizam;" to rescue the Hyderabad state from those financial embarrassments which were engulphing it in a sea of ruin. That the pecuniary transactions between William Palmer and Co. and the Nizam, though at the outset they may have afforded some temporary relief to the latter, did eventually work grievously ration. He (Mr. Trant) must look back to a date which would not make him appear a very young man when he called to his recollection his first acquaintance with Sir Charles Metcalfe. They were children together. They were at school together, under the same tutor, Dr. Goodall.. He and Sir Charles Metcalfe went out to India about the same period; they there pursued their studies for some time together, and they entered the Company's service together. . . . . The Company's servants were often placed in very delicate situations, where duty and feeling were opposed to each other..... He congratulated the Court on having amongst their servants a man so entirely devoted to the discharge of his duties-a man whom threats could not intimidate nor promises mislead a man who realised the picture drawn by Ho race: 'Justum et tenacem propositi virum, Non civium ardor prava jubentium, Non vultus instantis tyranni Kinnaird, was to the effect, that the REVIEW OF METCALFE'S CONDUCT. 93 to the detriment of the country, and greatly increase the sufferings of an overburdened people, is not to be doubted. That Metcalfe, in endeavoring to extricate the Nizam's Government from a connexion which he knew to be destructive of its best interests, was compelled painfully to wrestle down his personal feelings and to do his duty as a public servant at the sacrifice of long-standing private friendships, and of the ease and comfort of his life, gaining nothing in exchange but the ennobling consciousness of rectitude, I think has been amply demonstrated. Whether the Hyderabad Bankers did or did not transgress commercial morality as it is understood in India-whether they were worse or better than other money-lenders-it is not my business more particularly to inquire. The transaction was an immense one, and it became notorious. Neither its immensity nor its notoriety affect its real character; but they bring it within the legitimate domain of History and render it amenable to public inquiry. With the ordinary gains, however unhallowed, of a house of business, Metcalfe had nothing to do; the commercial morality of its partners was nothing to him. But when he found that their transactions with the Nizam's Government were not only embarrassing the state and impoverishing the people, but gradually erecting the partnership into a great political institution more influential than the British representative at the Court of Hyderabad-when he found, indeed, that William Palmer and Co. were gradually absorbing the revenues and usurping the Government of the country-it became a duty, greater than any other, to sever the connexion between them, and to rescue the Nizam from the gripe of a creditor so exacting and so oppressive. He did it. And it cost him much to do it. But "the evil tongues and rash judgments" which assailed him, he lived down; and it was not one of the least of his consolations in after days to know, that the example of fearlessness and disinterestedness set by the Hyderabad Resident was not lost upon the younger members of the profession he adorned. It did much, indeed, to stimulate the progressive reform which has brought the Indian Civil Service to its present high state of moral discipline and efficiency. LEAVING HYDERABAD. 95 CHAPTER III. [1823-1825.] LEAVING HYDERABAD. Illness of Charles Metcalfe-Death of his Brother-Correspondence with Dr. Goodall-Visit to Calcutta-Dr. Nicolson-Return to HyderabadImprovements in the Deccan-Invitation to Return to Delhi-Letters of Lord Amherst and Mr. Swinton. IN the autumn of 1823 the friends and correspondents of Charles Metcalfe-both those who wrote to him publicly and privately on grave affairs of State, and those who addressed him only in the language of personal affection-were disquieted and alarmed by a suspension of those communications from Hyderabad which had before been received with such unbroken regularity. They could not account for his long silence. Some there were who thought that they had offended him, and wrote warm-hearted letters to ask what they had done to incur his displeasure. But after a while there came tidings to Calcutta that sickness had fallen upon the Hyderabad Resident. His wontedly strong health had yielded at last to a distressing malady; and in the midst of the physical sufferings he had endured, he had been unable to write to his friends. |