GOVERNOR PITT.* Fort several reasons Govei'nor Pitt deserved to have
his biography written. He was of the stuff of those men who, from the days of Ralegh to those of Rhodes, have made England what she is. It is an act of posthumous justice on the part of one of his countrymen to rescue his reputation from . the hands of the German De Ruville, who saw and exaggerated, his faults but ignored his merits.. Moreover, ho was the progenitor of a line of 4statesmen. His son Robert, indeed, was an ignoble scion of an illustrious race. The only feat which he performed worthy of floating down the tide of anecdotal history is that, according to a legend of somewhat doubtful authenticity, he travelled from Madras to London with a diamond, worth a King's ransom, in the heel of his boot. But his grandson grasped at world-power at a time when most of the future competitors of his country were torturing their brains over such things as Pragmatic Sanction and spilling their blood for causes which were often of ephemeral importance. His great-grandson proved eventually to be the "pilot who weathered the storm" of the Revo- lutionary period. He has been happy in his biographer. Sir Cornelius Neale Dalton has not only recounted the deeds and portrayed the character of the man, but he has, given us a vivid picture of the state of , English society at a time when the leading politicians of the day were mostly corrupt and not unfrequently drunk ; when grave lawyers argued that " infidels were perpetual enemies " with whom no Englishman might trade without the special permission of his Sovereign; when, in fact, it was almost a duty on the part of every true-born Briton to " beat an outlaw, a traitor, or a pagan," and when the educational standard which prevailed amongst the upper classes may be estimated by reference to the following amazing specimen of primitive and undisciplined orthography which emanated from the pen of a lady of title. " Al hear," Lord Strafford's mother wrote, "are in great rapture of the King [George I.], * The Life of Thomas Pitt. By Sir Cornelius Neale Dalton, KAMA. Cambridge; at the University Press. [15s. net.]
and say he is the Wysist and Riohis Prince in Toarup I hope ho will prove see."
In the Pitt family the domestic barometer stood per- manently at "Stormy" for at least three generations. Although it may be gathered from Lord Rosehery's account that the great Chatham entertained a real love for his sister Ann, their relations appear to have been rather those of an armed truce, varied by spasmodic and alternate bursts of rage and affection, than of a solid alliance. But the breezes which ruffled the domestic waters in the time of the grandson were of trifling importance as compared with the hurricanes which at times swept over the family life of the grand- father. The husband quarrelled with the wife from whom be was eventually separated. Both the father and the mother quarrelled with the sons. The brothers and sisters quarrelled amongst each other, and the more remote kinsmen and kins- women were in a perpetual state of enmity. The Governor wrote to his eldest son from India commenting on the "hellish confusion" in his family, and complaining that "the vileness of their action on all sides was not to be paralleled in history." Of the female members of the family, Lucy, who was Thomas Pitt's favourite daughter, seems to have been the only member who had a "character for gentleness." Betty, one of Robert Pitt's daughters, is described as having "the face of an angel and a heart of all the furies." It was against Robert that the irascible Governor more especially poured forth all the vials of his wrath. His education appears to have been somewhat peculiar. Ho was advised by his father to study " Chill Lnw," as also " fortyfication and Gunnery." In the pursuit of this singularly varied curriculum he certainly did not acquire any sense of parental reverence. He was in the habit of alluding to his mother as " Old Madam." His extravagance was a perpetual source of annoyance to his father. Why should he have spent R500 on an Old Sarum election when it only cost his father R10 " for a dinner the day of the election"? But he did much worse than this. He turned Tory, and was even suspected of strong Jacobite sympathies. His indignant father, who was a stout Whig and Hanoverian, reviled him for joining "factious cabals and contriveing to put a French kiekshaw upon the throne againe." Besides the perpetual quarrels with son Robert, there was an even more bitter feud with "Cozen" John, who by a strange fatality was sent to India to support commercial interests which were wholly at variance with those of the Governor, and who wrote to his kinsman a letter con- taining " sundry expressions as if it had been dictated to him by the oyster wenches of Billingsgate." He was admonished by the Goyernor in the following frank terms: "Mind your trade, which is your Masters business, and when the Moors have bang'd you and Stript you of what you have, upon your Submission and begging pardon for what you have done, I may Chance to protect you here." In the end, John was hopelessly worsted. He was evidently no match for his masterful relative.
Thomas Pitt said of himself : "It was never my temper to be quarrelling and jangling." It may be admitted that he was at times sorely tried, but he was evidently a man who would
not brook contradiction. Whether in public or domestic affairs, his motto was eTs redpeepos feria At Madras he said:
"There shall be but one Governor whilst I am here." It is probable that his naturally fiery temper was not improved by residence in India. The late Lord Salisbury once said to me that "no one ever kept his temper south of the Isthmus of Suez." A letter from the Governor's agent in London appears to confirm the impression that, in so far as Madras society was concerned, the statement held good in Thomas Pitt's time. " Pray what is it reignes in India," Mr. Godfrey wrote in 1701, " that you are all upon the Quenelle P " We may, therefore, take it as proven that Thomas Pitt was, in the words of the Governor of the first East India Company,
"a fellow of a haughty, huffying, daring temper " ; but a little haughtiness, huffiness, and, more especially, daring were
perhaps not altogether amiss in the management of the Indian affairs of the day. Moreover, judged by the standard of morality prevalent at the time, he may be said to have been a man of high character. He was the prince of " interlopers," which was the term applied to those who were accused of infringing the monopoly granted to the original East India
Company; but interloping was not condemned by public opinion, and was eventually declared by a Resolution of the House of
Commons to he a "perfectly legitimate business in which every Englishman had a right to engage." There appears also to have been nothing objectionable in the means which he adopted for obtaining possession of what Lady Wentworth called time "great dyornont, as big as a great egg." This possession proved, indeed, eventually to be more of a. curse than a benefit to him. He hawked it about Europe, thinking at one time that the King of France or Spain, and at another that the King of Prussia, would be "the fairest chapman for it," though he was always quite prepared to treat with " any iforreign Prince about it." What with the bribe paid to the French Court jeweller in order to get him to pronounce the gem flawless, the loss of interest which accrued during the long period before the diamond was sold, and the fact that eventually the French Government failed to pay the whole of the purchase-money, the profit he made was, as his biographer points out, probably not " inordinate." The most questionable transaction in which be was engaged seems to have been the conclusion of an arrangement with Baptiste Martin, the Director-General of the French East India Company at Pondicherry, under which the two companies agreed not in any way to molest each other during the continuance of the war between France and England. In this case it is difficult to acquit him altogether of treason, or, at all events, of con- niving at treason.
Pitt's position while Governor of Madras was one of the utmost difficulty. There was a total want of unity of purpose amongst the English in India. The servants of the Old and New East India. Companies only thought of defeating and outwitting each other, and did not hesitate to rely on the aid of what they called " the Moors " with a view to accomplish- ing their object. The representatives of the Great Mogul treated the agents of the Old and New Companies alike with contumely. The English. one of them said, "were a company of base quarrelling people, and foul dealers."
Englishmen in Bengal were publicly " chawbucked " (flogged).
In England, political oorruption was rampant. The inquiries made by a Committee of the House of Commons elicited the fact that the first East India Company had spent £80,000 in Ministerial bribes. The King's Chief Minister, the Duke of Leeds, was disgraced and impeached. The most complete ignorance existed of the real state of affairs in India.
Sir Josiah Child, at one time Governor of the East India Company and a very influential man, was, according to Sir Cornelius Dalton's account, a sanctimonious and despotic prig. He expected his own orders to be obeyed implicitly, however foolish they might be, and he thought that "the laws of England were a heap of nonsense compiled by a few ignorant country gentlemen," and, there- fore, unworthy of attention. Appointments to positions of trust in India were shamelessly jobbed. No attention was
paid to local opinion. Governors who made any attempt to provide for the safety of the British possessions were repri- manded, and made personally liable for any expenses which they incurred. It was thought wiser to trust wholly to the observance by the native rulers of the firmans—or, as they were more commonly called, the " phirmaunds "—which they had granted. In the midst of all this confusion Thomas Pitt kept his head, and seems to have been the only man who had some glimmering sense of the fact that he had an Imperial mission to perform. When Dand Khan appeared before Fort St. George and demanded thirty thousand rupees of the English, Pitt sent him " some Pegn oranges," and eventually bought hint off with a smaller sum. He " firmly impressed on the native mind the impregnability of the feeble defences of Fort St. George, and the hopelessness on the part of the Mogul's armies to invest the fortified coast settlement of the English, so long as their command of the sea was assured.. . . Under his rule no native potentate or official dared to take personal liberties with any Englishman in time Carnatio." As an Empire- builder he cannot, of course, claim to rank with his illustrious grandson. Nevertheless, he contributed to lay the founda- tions of British rule in India. " He is entitled," Sir Cornelius Dalton says, "to a very distinguished position in the long line of our groat Proconsuls, who in every quarter of .the globe, dealing with every variety of race, in the face of manifold difficulties and opposition on the part of the Home Authorities, as well as of open enemies abroad, have for centuries done their part to make the British Empire what it is to-day." Without the energy, resourcefulness, and daring shown by such men as Thomas Pitt there would neve have been any British Empire. CRODIEL
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