THE HONORABLE MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE. [BORN 1779.-DIED 1859.] A HISTORY of the Civil Service of the East India Company would be a most interesting and instructive record. In that service many great men, sprung from the middle classes, without high family connexions or any other adventitious circumstances to give them more than their first start in life, have risen to high position and to still higher reputation. From the days of Warren Hastings to the days of John Lawrence, there have never been wanting members of the Civil Service to evince by their actions the possession of heroic qualities of the highest order. To be a civilian in India is not to be merely a member of a great bureaucracy. The duties which he is called upon to face are not solely the duties of the desk. As the soldier in India is often called upon to lay down the sword and to take up the portfolio of the administrator, so the civilian is often, on the great high road of his duty, surrounded by circumstances which compel him to lay down the portfolio and to gird on the sword. Of the civilian-soldier there was no better type than John Malcolm. Of the soldier-civilian there is none better than Mountstuart Elphinstone. I have given some account of the first; I now proceed to narrate some of the more noticeable incidents in the history of the second.* Mountstuart Elphinstone was the fourth son of a Scotch 1779. peer of that name; but though by courtesy an "honourable" Parentage and and of a very ancient lineage, the associations of his family were rather those of the middle classes than of the aristocracy, As Sir Henry Lawrence may be bracketed with Malcolm, so Sir Charles Metcalfe may be bracketed with Elphin stone. I write merely of the external circumstances of their lives. Their characters were widely different. education. 1779-93. and many of his kindred, moved by that spirit of adventure which is so powerful an element in the national character, had gone forth to seek their fortunes in the East. His father. was a soldier, who rose to be a General Officer and Governor of Edinburgh Castle; but one of his uncles was a Director of the East India Company, and Indian writerships were held to be no unsatisfactory provision for the younger sons of Scotch peers. The first fourteen years of Mountstuart's life were spent in Scotland; a goodly part of them in Edinburgh Castle. What he learnt either at home or at the High School, which he attended for two years, was probably not much; for he was not a studious boy, but one delighting in manly exercises and somewhat addicted to mischief. Seventy years afterwards there were those who still bore in remembrance the lithe figure and the long curly golden locks of the good-looking, lively, sprightly boy, who outraged the loyal sensibilities of his father and other officers of the Castle, by singing snatches of revolutionary songs learnt from the French prisoners who were confined there. His juvenile principles had a strong republican complexion, and the hair which he wore down his back was intended to be the outward sign of his revolutionary sentiments. And it is related that years afterwards the memory of this juvenile republicanism was a standing joke against him, and that after his arrival in India some of his companions gave it practical demonstration by presenting Mountstuart with a cap of liberty and a tricolor cockade. When he was fourteen years of age he was sent to England, and placed under the educational charge of Dr. Thomson, of Kensington; with whom he remained until he was taken away to be sent to India, as a writer on the Company's establishment. He spent his holidays at the house of his uncle, Mr. Adam, whose son John was destined for the same service, and who lived to become one of its brightest ornaments. As a stripling, young Elphinstone does not seem to have been more grave in his studies than as a boy. He was said to have been "clever enough for anything," but very idle, full of spirit, and somewhat boisterous in his mirth. But he was fond of reading too-in certain directions; and it is remembered that he delighted in quoting Shakspeare and reciting snatches of Those were 1795-99. doggrel rhyme, perhaps of his own making. In July, 1795, Mountstuart Elphinstone, being then six- India. When, early in 1796, young Elphinstone landed at Cal- First days in cutta, Sir John Shore was Governor-General of India. He was a man of a quiet mind, and the times were eminently quiet. But the historian of his career has one noticeable incident to dwell upon-one not unexciting story to tell-the story of the Oude succession. Sir John Shore set aside the claims of Vizier Ali to the throne of Oude, and the young man from that time cherished a feeling of bitterest resentment against the English. A dangerous and disaffected person, he was held under some kind of surveillance at Benares, but he had a considerable number of followers, with all his own insolence and vindictiveness, and one day in 1799 they fell upon the British officers at the Residency and massacred all within their reach. It happened that at this time Mr. Elphinstone was assistant to the magistrate at Benares. His young Cavalry friend, Houston, was paying him a visit whilst the slaughter was going on at the Residency; and the disastrous tidings reached them in time only for them to mount their horses, and, pursued by Vizier Ali's troopers, to ride for their very lives. There are some men who appear to be born ever to be in the thick of the world's action-ever on the * I am indebted for these memorials of Elphinstone's early life principally to a very interesting and valuable biogra phical sketch contributed by Sir Ed- 1799. great high road of History, pressing forward, with their loins girt about; whilst others repose quietly in peaceful nooks, or saunter idly along the byways of life. To the first and the smaller class belonged Mountstuart Elphinstone. This escape from Vizier Ali's horsemen prefigured his whole career. There was now to be a great growth of History; and ever for more than twenty years he was to be in the thick of it. A new Governor-General had begun to reign; and a new era had commenced. Lord Wellesley was a man with a "grand policy," and, scorning all constitutional restraints, he determined to work it out. This grand policy was incompatible with peace; so in a little time our armies were in motion, firstly in Southern India, where Tippoo was to be subdued, and secondly in Central India, where accounts were to be settled with the Mahratta Princes. To the events which were developing themselves in the latter part of the country, I have now to invite the reader's attention-a wide expanse stretching from Delhi to Poonah, over which Lord Wellesley was extending the network of his diplomacies in days when diplomacy was ever another name for war. For men of action the times were most propitious. The Company's civil servants might "provide the investment," or administer the regulations; they might be merchants, or magistrates, or revenue collectors, if they desired to live peaceably with good houses over their heads; but for more adventurous spirits there was a grand outlet through what was officially called the "Political Department," but which in Europe is known as the Diplomatic Service. To that service all the most high-spirited young civilians eagerly betook themselves; and Mr. Elphinstone among the first of them. His early inclinations had been all towards the military profession; in his teens he had looked upon the life of a subaltern as the ne plus ultra of human enjoyment; and there was that in him which, had circumstances favoured his wishes, would have made him one of the first captains of the age. But although it was provided that he should live much in the camp, and see, face to face, the stern realities of war, there was no recognised position for him in the battle-field, and therefore only the danger of the fight without its honours and rewards. But there were honours and rewards of another kind, and young Elphinstone was fully satisfied. In 1801, he was 1801-1803. appointed an assistant to the British Resident at Poonah, or, in other words, an attaché to the British Mission at the Court of the Peishwah-the greatest of the Mahratta Princes. The Resident was Colonel (afterwards Sir Barry) Close; an officer of high distinction, to whom both soldiers and diplomatists looked up with reverence, and under whom any young aspirant might be proud and happy to serve. In the whole range of service there was no post better fitted to call forth and develop the energy and ability of such a man as Mr. Elphinstone. Once appointed to it, he was on the high road to fame and fortune. The times, as I have said, were most propitious for those who panted for action. The Mahrattas, having usurped the power of the Mogul and established their supremacy in Upper India, were now contending among themselves. This was our opportunity. The great game was now to be played with something like a certainty of winning. The disunion of the Mahrattas was their weakness; their weakness was our strength. Dum singuli præliantur universi vincuntur. It was Lord Wellesley's policy to interfere in these internal disputes, and he did so, by espousing the cause of the Peishwah, and entering into a friendly alliance with him. Whether the British Governor might not have been content to look on a little longer, without taking a hand in the game, is a question for historians to discuss. It is enough here to say, that, having entangled ourselves in diplomacies, we were soon in the midst of war. The year 1803 was a memorable one in the annals of India The first -memorable in the career of Mountstuart Elphinstone-me- Mahratta war. morable in the career of a still greater man, who then first made for himself a place in history. Colonel Arthur Wellesley, the brother of the Governor-General, had taken part in the operations which resulted in the conquest of Mysore; but the qualities which he had displayed were not so conspicuously great as to preserve him from the reproach of being favoured as the brother of the Governor-General. The Mahratta war, however, proved him to be a true soldier. It was the privilege of Mountstuart Elphinstone to watch the dawn of the great captain's glory. It has happened to many a man at the outset of his career to profit largely by an accident |