Life of the Marquess Wellesley

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STATESMEN SERIES.

LIFE OF THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY, K.G.

BY

COLONEL G. B. MALLESON, C.S.I.

NEW EDITION

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

PREFACE TO NEW EDITION. 4

PREFATORY NOTE 6

CHAPTER I. — INTRODUCTORY. — 1760-1797. 7

The Wellesleys—Eton and Oxford—Lord Mornington takes his seat in the Irish House of Lords—Speeches in the English Parliament—He defends Pitt’s war policy—Effect of his speech—His marriage—Appointed Governor-General of India—Circumstances of the appointment—Lord Mornington’s qualifications. 7

CHAPTER II. — GENERAL VIEW OF THE STATE OF INDIA ON THE ARRIVAL THERE OF THE EARL OF MORNINGTON. — 1784-1786. 13

Treaty of Mangalor —Defeat of Típu Sultán—Negotiations with the French—Ripaud’s intrigues—The assistance of Malartic—State of affairs at Haidarábád—The Nizam’s dealings with the French—War with the Maráthás—Increase of the French contingent—The Maráthás—Condition of the North—Character and policy of Sir John Shore. 13

CHAPTER III. — TÍPU SULTÁN, THE NIZAM, AND THE PESHWÁ — FEB.-DEC. 1798. 21

Lord Mornington’s policy towards the Nizam and Típu defined—Necessity of readjusting the balance of power—Lord Mornington at Madras—Governor Malartic’s proclamation—Negotiations with the Nizam—Signature of the new treaty—Dismissal of the Nizam’s French contingent—Subjection of the Nizam to English Influence—Lord Mornington’s negotiations with the Peshwá. 21

CHAPTER IV. — TĺPU SULTÁN AND THE FALL OF SERINGAPATAM. — JUNE, 1798—JANUARY, 1799. 28

Lord Mornington’s despatch to General Harris—Consternation at Madras—Lord Mornington’s reply—His minute—Disbandment of the sipáhis—Correspondence with Típu—Forward movement of the troops—Lord Mornington’s proclamation—Fall of Seringapatam—Division of the conquered territory—The Peshwá declines his share—Restoration of the Hindu dynasty—Success of Lord Mornington’s policy. 28

CHAPTER V. — TANJÚR, SÚRAT, HAIDARÁBÁD, THE KARNÁTlK, OUDH, PERSIA, KÁBUL, EGYPT. — 1799-1801. 43

Lord Wellesley’s rewards and his disappointment—State of affairs in Tangúr—Removal of Amír Singh, and conclusion of a treaty with the Rájah—Settlement of the Súrat difficulty—Rejection of Lord Wellesley’s proposals by the Nawáb of the Karnátik—Discovery of his intrigues with Típu—Death of the Nawáb and conditions of the treaty with his successor—Regulation of our relations with the Nizam—Disordered condition of Oudh—Missions of Colonel Scott and Mr. Henry Wellesley—Surrender of the Nawáb-Wazir—The Governor-General at Káhnpúr—Persia and Afghanistan—The French excluded from Persia—Danger from the Isle of France and Bourbon—Difficulties in the way of their capture—Summary of Lord Wellesley’s foreign policy. 43

CHAPTER VI. — DOMESTIC LEGISLATION. — 1797-1803. 56

Evil plight of the civil administration—Lord Wellesley’s reforms—Mr. Tucker’s finance—The establishment of Christian observances—Censorship of the native press—Lord Wellesley made Commander-in-Chief—His educational scheme—Differences with the India House—Lord Wellesley’s resignation—The Treaty of Amiens—Lord Wellesley refrains from carrying out its conditions—Opening of new Government House—Renewed difficulties with the Directors—Lord Wellesley again offers to resign. 56

CHAPTER VII. — THE MARÁTHÁ WARS. — 1802-1805. 66

The Maráthá, Empire—Its consolidation by Mádhají Sindhiá—his death and its consequences—The treaty of Bassein—Discontent of Dáolat Ráo Sindhiá—Lord Wellesley’s military preparations—Restoration of the Peshwá by General Wellesley—Evasions of Sindhiá and the Bhonslá.—Lord Wellesley’s plan of campaign—Assaye, Argaum, and Láswárí—The Maráthás sue for peace—Inaction of Holkar—He now resolves on war—Monson’s retreat—It is avenged by General Lake—Holkar’s surrender. 66

CHAPTER VIII. — LAST DAYS IN INDIA. — 1803-1805. 77

Panic of the Board of Directors—Lord Castlereagh’s opinion—Lord Wellesley is ordered to cancel the treaty of Bassein—Further rebuff’s—Progress of the Maráthá war—Lord Wellesley’s letter to Lake—Resolutions of thanks to him—Lord Wellesley’s letter to the Directors—Appointment of Lord Cornwallis—The manner of its communication—Mr. Thornton’s testimony to Lord Wellesley’s memory. 77

CHAPTER IX. — YEARS OF DISAPPOINTMENT. — 1806-1809. 87

Lord Wellesley’s return—Meeting with his family—Death of Mr. Pitt—Paull’s attack—Other Parliamentary enquiries—The dinner at Almack’s—Prospects of office—Speech in the House of Lords—The mission to Seville—Sir Arthur Wellesley’s position—Lord Wellesley is appointed to the Foreign Office. 87

CHAPTER X. — FOREIGN SECRETARY. — DEC. 1809—JAN. 1812. 93

Gloominess of the situation—The Continental blockade and the right of search—Lord Wellesley’s qualifications—Talavera—Lord Wellesley’s reassuring despatch—Dissensions in the Ministry—Reconciliation with Canning—Attempts to strengthen the Ministry—Reply to Lord Lansdowne—Masséna’s repulse and its consequences—Canning refuses to join the Ministry—Negotiations with the United States—The Regency Question and Lord "Wellesley’s silence—His partial withdrawal from the Cabinet—Success of foreign affairs—Lord Wellesley’s resignation—He refuses to join the Liverpool Ministry—Attempts to form a fusion of parties—Restoration of the Liverpool Cabinet—Lord Wellesley’s account of the transactions—Salamanca and its consequences. 93

CHAPTER XI — NINE YEARS OF EXCLUSION — 1813-1822. 111

The Peace—Commercial difficulties—Lord Wellesley’s Protest in favour of cheap food—He opposes the continuation of war—He advocates the reduction of popular burdens—The Catholic Emancipation question—Wellesley becomes Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. 111

CHAPTER XII. — THE VICEROYALTY OF IRELAND. — 1822-1827. 115

Conditions of the Union—The state of Ireland—Lord Wellesley’s reception—His Appointments—Coercive measures and measures of relief—Secret societies—Riot in Dublin—The bottle plot—Improvement of Wellesley’s position—His second marriage—Resignation of the Lord Lieutenancy. 115

CHAPTER XIII. — LORD STEWARD OF THE HOUSEHOLD, AND AGAIN LORD LIEUTENANT OF IRELAND. — 1830-1831. 122

Return to England—Fresh disappointments—Speech on Catholic Emancipation—Passing of the Bill and full of the Tory Governor—Lord Stewardship of the Household—Again Lord Lieutenant of Ireland—Renewal of the Coercion Act and its consequences—Lord Wellesley becomes Lord Chamberlain—His retirement from public life. 122

CHAPTER XIV. — THE SUNSET OF LIFE, CHARACTER. 126

Literature and conversation—Recognition of his services by the Court of Directors—His last public utterance—His death—Character—Estimates of his oratory—His real greatness. 126

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 133

PREFACE TO NEW EDITION.

NEARLY five years have elapsed since I endeavoured, in a volume of the Statesmen Series, to present to my countrymen a sketch of the varied and brilliant career of Marquess Wellesley. I endeavoured, in that sketch, to prove that it was the great Marquess who had welded into one whole the scattered portions of the British territories in India; who had given to those united portions the imperial form they have since retained; who, finding, on his arrival, that British India was only one amongst three powers, the nominal equal of each of the other two, had realised the dream of Warren Hastings by giving it absolute predominance. I showed, or at least endeavoured to show, that Wellesley alone had done it; that it was his genius which had conceived the great scheme; his knowledge of men which had selected the proper instruments to carry it into effect. I further pointed out that whilst his great qualities were recognised in India; are remembered in the southern parts of the peninsula even to the present day; his merits were admitted much more slowly in England. I endeavoured to explain this failure on the part of his countrymen to render full justice to his deserts by calling attention to the fact that in solid judgment, and more especially in prescience, he was, on all the political questions which agitated the public mind, far in advance of the majority of the politicians of the day. It was because that majority preferred the more cautious, more retrograde, and more narrow views of his brother, the Duke of Wellington, that the Marquess was compelled to fashion in the background a policy to which those who came after him gave their adhesion.

The little work was extremely well received by the critics and by the public. One writer indeed who has given a volume on the same subject to the Rulers of India Series, the Rev. Mr. Hutton, paid me the great compliment of declaring that it possessed but one fault—it was too short. This is a fault which, in a series such as this, it is difficult to remedy. But the story is at least compact, and whilst it brings out, I venture to believe, the salient points of the character of the great man, and indicates his many merits, it makes no attempt to slur over his failings.

In submitting to the public a new and cheaper edition of this sketch, I am specially anxious that the larger public of the present day shall have the opportunity of studying the character of Marquess Wellesley as he was, and not as the slower intellect of his contemporaries generally represented him to have been. After critically examining the objections they have made to him as a public man I find that, reduced to a practical standard, two only remain. It is insisted that he cared too much for show, and that he loved too much to dictate to his colleagues. Both these faults, if faults they were, were the consequences of his Indian career. Whilst a most able, he was a showy, or, to use a more fitting word, he was a magnificent ruler in India. But such show, such magnificence, adapted itself to the natures of the people of India. There it was regarded as a virtue. Wellesley followed the example of the best-known and most honoured sovereigns of the Mughal dynasty, the example of Akbar, of Jahangir, of Shah Jahan. He was famous among the native princes and peoples for the splendour of his Court. And it has to be added that when such splendour is combined with success, as it was always in his case, it exercises a marvellous influence on the eyes and minds of an oriental people. As to the other charge, it must be admitted that seven years of successful policy, inspired by his own brain, had made him a dictator. It is the way of superior men, brought in contact with beings of less intelligence, to trust entirely to their own intellect, and therefore to dictate. That in England he may have been wanting in the suaviter in modo must be admitted, but no one has ever questioned his claim to the virtue expressed by the term fortiter in re.

A French writer, describing the actions and analysing the character of Marquess Wellesley, has expressed his wonder, that considering the great services he had rendered to Great Britain in India there had not been at once opened to him a career in England which would have given the country the advantage of his splendid abilities. Answering himself the question, the writer has laid down a rule of action on the part of English politicians which possesses more than a grain of truth. In England, he writes, the exercise of .-supreme power in India is not regarded as a good preparation for the exercise of constitutional power in England. Further, his [Wellesley’s] advocacy of the cause of Catholic emancipation involved him in the discredit which attached to the Whig party for the same advocacy. Moreover, his glory and his importance waned before the greater glory and the greater importance attached by the general public to the services of his brother, the Duke of Wellington.

There is much truth in this criticism, incomplete as at is. What there is lacking in it will be found in this volume. It is the duty of posterity to rectify the often unjust judgment of contemporary-writers. In the hope that this little book will work steadily in that direction I commit it, in its cheaper form, to the indulgence and good judgment of a wider class of readers than that to which it was originally introduced.

C. B. MALLESON.

27, West Cromwell Road.

PREFATORY NOTE

FOR the purposes of this little compilation I have consulted, chiefly, Pearce’s Memoirs and Correspondence of the Marquess Wellesley; The Despatches, Minutes, and Correspondence of the Marquess Wellesley, edited by Mr. Montgomery Martin; Torrens’s The Marquess Wellesley, Architect of Empire; Torrens’s Memoirs of Viscount Melbourne; Bulwer’s Life of Lord Palmerston; The Quarterly Review; The Calcutta Review; The Annual Register; The Asiatic Annual Register; Wilks’s; History of Mysore; Thornton’s History of India. I have indented, also, on notes made in India when I was contemplating a life of the Marquess Wellesley on a larger scale.

G. B. M.

LIFE OF THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY, K.G.

CHAPTER I. — INTRODUCTORY. — 1760-1797.

The Wellesleys—Eton and Oxford—Lord Mornington takes his seat in the Irish House of Lords—Speeches in the English Parliament—He defends Pitt’s war policy—Effect of his speech—His marriage—Appointed Governor-General of India—Circumstances of the appointment—Lord Mornington’s qualifications.

SOME men are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them. The two brothers Wellesley, the great Marquess, as he was called in India, and his illustrious brother, whose name is inseparably connected with the final defeat of the greatest warrior the world has ever seen, combined in their own persons two out of the three categories mentioned by Shakespeare. They were born great, and they achieved greatness. Writing of such men it becomes possible to dispense with a pedigree stretching back, though that pedigree may, far into the earlier age of English history. It will be sufficient to state that the family of the Wellesleys can be traded to the year 1239; that it is of Saxon origin, deriving its name from the manor of Wellesley, anciently Wellesleigh, in the county of Somerset; that, in 1339, the representative of a branch of the family, Sir William de Wellesley, was summoned to Parliament as a Baron of the realm, and received from King Edward II. a grant by patent of the custody of the castle of Kildare; that, on transferring that castle to the Earls of Kildare, he was granted by Edward III., in 1312, the custody of the manor of Demor; that thenceforward, for services rendered to the Crown, the successive representatives of this branch of the family increased their possessions and influence until the year 1745, when Garret Wellesley, or Wesley, as the name was then often spelt, dying without issue, bequeathed all his possessions to his cousin, Richard Colley or Cowley. The Cowleys, an old Staffordshire family, had settled in Ireland in the reign of Henry VIII., and had prospered. The Richard Cowley, who succeeded, in 1745, to the Wellesley property, had inherited his father’s estate of Castle Carbery in 1700. He was cousin once removed of Garret Wellesley, and in his veins there flowed the blood of the Wellesleys and the Cusakes, descendants from Dermot Macraorough, King of Leinster. On his accession to the Wellesley estates, Richard Cowley assumed, as required by the testator, the family name, then spelt Wesley. He was shortly afterwards raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Mornington. His son, Garret, who succeeded him, was further advanced to the dignities of Viscount Wellesley of Dengan Castle, and Earl of Mornington, of County Meath. This nobleman had, by Anne, eldest daughter of Arthur Hill Trevor, first Viscount Dungannon, six sons and two daughters. Of these sons the subject of this memoir was the eldest.

Richard Cowley Wellesley—it will be convenient to give the names as they were subsequently spelt—was born on June 20th, 1760. His father, who had a passion for music, and who attained some eminence as a composer, placed him at an early age at Eton. There the young Irishman speedily developed abilities of no common order. His contributions to the three volumes of Musæ Etonenses give evidence of very considerable classical attainments, and he had achieved a great reputation as a scholar when, he went up to Oxford. He matriculated as a nobleman at Christ Church, on December 24th. 1778. There, likewise, he was much distinguished for his proficiency in classical literature, and for the capacity he displayed to deal with large questions. His father dying in May, 1781, Wellesley, called away to important duties in his own country, could not stay to take his degree. He-returned to Ireland, and, having attained his majority, entered at once upon the duties of his position. His first act, writes the author of the Wellesley Memoirs, Mr. R, R. Pearce, on becoming of age, was characteristic of the generosity and integrity of his manly nature. He voluntarily took upon himself the numerous pecuniary obligations of his deceased father, and exhibited his filial affection towards his surviving parent by placing the estates, to which he had succeeded, under the management of his mother. His Lordship also directed his attention to the intellectual training of his brothers, who were all greatly indebted to him for his watchful and prudent care in early life. His brother Arthur was then twelve years old.

That same year the young Earl of Mornington took his seat in the House of Peers, in College Green, Dublin. The Irish Parliament had passed, the year preceding, the memorable resolution: That the King’s most excellent Majesty, and the Lords and Commons of Ireland, are the only power competent to make laws to bind Ireland. Following this resolution, a body of volunteers, 50,000 strong, demanded from England the recognition of the legislative independence of the island Lord Mornington, though imbued with a sterling love for his native country, could not tolerate proceedings which appeared to him to strike at the very root of orderly and constitutional government. The fact that an armed assembly should hold regular sittings in the vicinity of the Houses of Parliament, with the object of dictating to, or overawing, the members of those Houses, was in his eyes a monstrous proceeding, not to be endured. He took, then, a leading part in the debate on the Address of both Houses to the Crown, declaring the perfect satisfaction which we feel in the many blessings we enjoy under His Majesty’s most auspicious Government, and our present happy Constitution; and to acquaint His Majesty that at this time we think it peculiarly incumbent upon us to express our determined resolution to support the same inviolate with our lives and fortunes. The resolution was carried. The support .accorded to it by Lord Mornington must not be interpreted to imply that he was perfectly satisfied with the social or political condition of Ireland. On the contrary, he was, even at that early period, a strong .advocate for the removal of the disabilities which weighed on the Roman Catholics, and for the extension of the liberties of the Press. In his eyes, too, the position of the Irish Parliament, powerful for discussion, but powerless for action, was eminently unsatisfactory. His support of the resolution, then, was prompted solely by his desire to place on record his disapproval of the practice of intimidation sanctioned by the volunteers.

It was impossible that a man with his original and daring mind, a man born for action, should for long be content with the limited sphere within which the duties of the Irish Parliament were confined. At the General Election of 1784, then, Lord Mornington stood, and was returned for the borough of Beeralston, in Devonshire. It is strange that his first speech should have been on an Indian subject. He attacked Lord North for his support of Warren Hastings, in the face of his declaration that the Court of Directors had condemned every one of his actions; and he called upon that Lord to explain how, with that opinion before him, he had arrived at the conclusion that it would be wrong to recall the Indian Governor. This speech, and the speeches which followed were delivered with so finished an elocution, and were marked, by so much spirit and point, that Lord Mornington was speedily recognised as a speaker who had to be reckoned with. His promotion, then, was unusually rapid. In 1785 he was sworn a Privy Councillor for Irelands. In September of the following year he was nominated a Lord of the Treasury. In the February following, then member for Saltash in Cornwall, he supported, in a most able speech, the measures proposed by Mr. Pitt for a commercial treaty with France; and, in 1788, as member for Windsor, he supported, alike in the English House of Commons and the Irish House of Lords, the measure regulating the Regency proposed by Mr. Pitt. Four-years later he earnestly supported Wilberforce in his efforts to extinguish the slave-trade. He opposed, the year following, Mr. Grey’s motion for a reform of the English House of Commons. He showed how, notwithstanding the admitted imperfections of the then existing, system, the nation had, under its auspices, made a marvellously quick recovery from the humiliation and misfortunes caused by the result of the war with the American colonists; and contrasted the state of France, emerging red-handed from a drastic revolution, with that of prosperous and contented England. Grey’s motion was defeated by 232 to 41, and shortly afterwards (June 21st, 1793) Lord Mornington was sworn a member of the English Privy Council, and nominated a Commissioner for the Affairs of India, that is, a member of the Board of Control. This was the first step, and a most important-step, to the important post which he was to fill in India.

On February the 11th, 1793, England, Spain, and Holland had joined Austria and Prussia in the first coalition against France. A resolution brought forward early in the session in the House of Commons condemning the war was lost by 270 to 44 votes, and there can be no doubt that that vote truly represented the feeling of the majority of the nation. On the reassembling of Parliament in January of the following year, another important debate took place, during the discussion of the Address, on the policy and progress of the war. In this debate there was assigned to Lord Mornington a leading part. Speaking early, he argued that, if the original necessity for the war had ceased, he would be the first to recommend a