[From "The Metropolitan, No. 20."]

ART. V. The Life of General Sir David Baird, Baronet. In 2 vols. 8vo. Bentley. London. 1832.

WITH a fine engraving from Raeburn of this excellent officer and truly honorable man, we are presented with a most interesting piece of biography, - interesting not merely on account of the details of the life of a veteran, than whom the British service did not boast a name, except one, more endowed with the qualifications which form a great officer, but further, by its aid in yielding additional evidence in his treatment, to that unhallowed system by which the East India Company extended their power in the East, equally regardless of justice to individuals, and of the most sacred treaties. The rights of unoffending sovereigns, when gold and territory were to be had, at times when their own safety was not at all involved in the question, were to them of no moment. The officer whose generous sympathies and indignant feelings revolted at cruelty, infamy, and injustice, whose spirit was too noble to become the tool of underlings in the work of dishonor, was destined at their hands to meet mortifications, where he should have been honored and rewarded. The acts of the Company's instruments, and their own participation in them, will one day be further unfolded to view. So uncompromising and so unerring is the spirit of justice, that the British people have neither exalted into heroes the conscience-stricken suicide Clive, nor the power-shielded Hastings. England will not identify them with her great men, and the sooner the veil of oblivion is drawn over their names the better. The more active interference of the crown with the Company during the last twenty years, and no doubt the better feelings and principles of the Company itself, have stayed the recurrence of acts at which nature shudders and humanity sickens, while the sacredness of treaties and the rights of princes, about which so much is said in Europe, in the East have been recently held in higher estimation.

Sir David Baird was born in December, 1757, and died on the 18th of August, 1829. He was the fifth child of William Baird, of Newbyth, N. B., and lost his father when he was only eight years old. He entered the army in 1772, at the age of fifteen. In figure he was tall, and well formed. His countenance, if we may judge from his portrait, marks a mind of cheerfulness, courage, intellect, and incapacity of dishonor, from the bold and open character of the features, which are also singularly agreeable. As early as 1779 he went to India. The Company and Hyder Aly were at peace. After a war of no great length and of varying success, a treaty had been concluded between the honorable Company and Hyder, when the latter might have ruined them, as he well knew. It was agreed that each party should remain as it

stood when the contest commenced, forts taken on each side to be restored, and an alliance offensive and defensive to be concluded; it specifically laid down that if either party were attacked, the other should lend its aid. No great while after the conclusion of this treaty, Hyder was attacked by the Mahrattas. He applied for the aid guaranteed by this most solemn treaty; the Company flatly refused it, because they feared it might bring a war upon themselves! Hyder again and again urged them (as they would not fail to have urged him, in a like case, to the same tune); the treatybreaking Company, regardless of dishonor, shrunk from the performance of their solemn pledge. Hyder made the best peace he could with the Mahrattas, and stung by the conduct of the honorable Company, became, as he was justified in becoming, their bitterest foe. It is very lamentable that brave officers personally suffered from the acts of the tiger, when the royal beast should have discriminated in his vengeance, and poured it only on the heads that merited it. The breach of honor was hardly made before the Mahrattas were upon the Company itself, and it had to meet the contest alone, a contest arising out of a more dishonorable act than even the breach of a solemn treaty. It was no less than receiving the renegade murderer of a lawful reigning prince, and promising to support him if he would cede a portion of the territory he acquired by the price of his victim's (his own nephew's) blood ! The Mahrattas, justly indignant at such indescribable turpitude, formed an alliance with Hyder, that bold, talented, but cruel prince. In the subsequent war a part of the Company's army was routed, and nearly all killed or taken. Among the prisoners was Sir David Baird, who was also wounded. He was conducted to Seringapatam, and with other officers, many of whom perished there, suffered the severest hardships for nearly four years, until the peace. To his excellent constitution Sir David owed his life, for but few survived the rigors they sustained. In such a service as that of the Company at this period, independence of mind and the strict integrity which would do right, regardless of consequences, was, of all other qualifications, the least likely to recommend to the good graces of the Company's agents. All its servants appear to have been a very different race from those of the present day, and in consequence men do not now return from India nabobs in wealth. The truth is, that the Indian army is officered by men of honor, and is not now what it was then; and the British officers there know how to appeal at home, and be heard, even against the Company, many of whose servants then were adventurers; they are now men of high character.

No sooner was Sir David (then Captain) Baird once more free, than he was doomed to meet the first of the many mortifications he sustained from the honorable Company. His services, his integrity, four years of cruel imprisonment, what were these! A junior halfpay lordling was put over his head for a majority, though the majority was not actually vacant. His brother officers memorialized

home, and his lordship's appointment was very properly refused to be confirmed. Such is the advantage of a regular government that has a character at stake. It may promote a favorite; interest may cause acts of injustice; but it will not be deaf to extraordinary merit, nor will it for sordid lucre's sake dishonor itself, break treaties, and fling to the winds all character and fame. In 1787, Sir David got his majority, and visited Europe, and in 1791 returned to India a lieutenant-colonel. How many have risen to this rank without a day's active service, while all Sir David's sufferings only enabled him by purchase to obtain a lieutenant-colonelcy, after a service of nineteen years. On reaching India he was employed at Seringapatam. Tippoo was the reigning sovereign in that capital, which the Company, with their Mahratta allies, so honorably acquired, invested. This ended in the peace of 1792. Soon after, Sir David was made commander at Tanjore, after the taking of Pondicherry. Here his honorable feelings were again outraged by the conduct of the Company, which had determined to ruin the rajah, a prince of good character and high principle: a Mr. M was made civil resident, for the purpose of forcing this prince to give up his realm, and become their pensioner. Sir David was not a tool of the Company's, but an officer of the British army, and as such he was desired to collect the troops, and place a party of them near the palace. The object of this trick was evident, but not a word of the purpose for which they were so placed was told to their commander. To such conduct he demurred. A correspondence ensued, curious enough, and well worthy the reader's attention. This Mr. M-—, in an officious letter, says he shall take care that British honor is not tarnished; he who was then conducting a scheme of chicanery to trick a sovereign out of his dominions. Sir David's correspondence is most manly, but little suited to the atmosphere of Madras and its rulers, where Lord Hobart was president. This Mr. M-— and fear together, (to operate still stronger with the latter, was the object of making the troops appear at the palace,) obtained the reluctant signature of the innocent, unoffending, and honorable rajah to the management of his dominions by the Company. The rajah stated that he was so alarmed with threats, and so grossly deceived by misstatements, that he resolved to appeal to the governorgeneral for the restoration of his rightful domain. He did not appeal in vain. Sir John Shore ordered their restitution, and the dishonest plotters were for a time baffled in their efforts to rifle the rajah of his territory. Sir David was the medium through which the scheme was rendered abortive for the present, for he sent the petitions to the governor-general himself, feeling the indignation so natural at the conduct of the Madras presidency. Sir David knew that, as far as he could be made so, he would become the victim of his conduct, but he seems to have possessed the true nobility of heart, that knows not fear when acting rightly. The pretext for the first attack upon this brave officer was his firing a royal salute

on the restoration of the territories, at the rajah's desire, salutes having always before been fired at his highness's request. The resident named M had delayed the order to deliver the territories, but the poor rajah having announced that the restoration was made, feared to deceive the people, and requested the salute. This act, in which there was nothing to censure, was visited by the order of the chief of the Madras council, Lord Hobart, who had been baffled, to march immediately with the 71st regiment to Pondicherry. One of those ridiculous letters, which men crossed in their object often write, was received by Sir David soon after, and answered by him in a clear, convincing, and manly manner; it cannot be read without conviction of its being dictated by a sense of honor and justice worthy a British soldier. The order to march was a piece of spite worthy those who had plotted the downfall and ruin of an unoffending and independent prince in close alliance with the Company. The plan was to get the native princes, through fear or under some specious pretext, to admit a body of their troops, and pay them, and thus, whenever it seemed good in their eyes, upon a plausible occasion, to seize their territory and revenues, and make them its pensioners, or de facto its prisoners. Perhaps through the same influence, soon after, the 71st regiment which Sir David had disciplined to high perfection, was broken up by superior orders; the men cruelly drafted into the 73d and 74th, and Colonel Baird and staff ordered to England. Thanks to the Duke of York, he afterwards put an end to this system. With the thanks of his military superiors, Baird quitted India, reached the Cape, and took a command there. There he met, on his way out, Lord Mornington, whom he found far from being, like Lord Teignmouth, a protector from the injustice of Lord Hobart towards the rajah of Tanjore. It was easy to see that he was going out, among other things, with the Company's orders to deprive this unfortunate prince of his territories. Lord Hobart was after this Sir David's enemy; once baffled by his honor and integrity, he felt the shame of narrow minds consequent upon his conduct, and exerted against him every influence, no matter whether such acts were apparent or concealed. An expedition was projected against Manilla, but officers with incomplete regiments were nominated to it, and one of these was his junior, Colonel Wellesley, now the Duke of Wellington. He felt these things so much, he had been on the point of returning to Europe before his regiment was broken up.

Again Sir David was ordered back to India. There, as before, he was doomed to feel how little his principles availed him in Eastern politics. He was now appointed to a brigade, but a junior officer, Col. Wellesley, was put over his head. In vain he complained, all was useless. After some fighting, an engagement took place, for which Colonel Wellesley has been blamed; and which, but for a change of position by the enemy, Sir David Baird must have undertaken. By a singular and most extraordinary 18 t

VOL. 1. NO. II.

concatenation of circumstances, Colonel Wellesley was always coming across the path of Sir David's advancement; yet he showed no mortification. In a night attack, Colonel Wellesley missed his men, owing to their giving way in disorder, and he was obliged to grope his way to his quarters. In the morning, the attack was ordered to be resumed, but Colonel Wellesley could not be found; and the troops having waited an hour, Baird was ordered to take the command, but he said to the commander-in-chief, "Don't you "think it would be fair to give Wellesley an opportunity of re"trieving the affair of last night?" This was noble and generous, to a junior officer particularly. Colonel Wellesley now came, led the detachment, and succeeded. Colonel Wellesley had lost his way the preceding night, and proceeding to head-quarters worn out with fatigue, and finding the commander-in-chief not awake, threw himself on a table and fell asleep. This was made the ground of a hundred stories to his disadvantage; and a Colonel Beatson, with that zeal which marks the courtier, says Colonel Wellesley deferred the attack, having confined his operations to causing a diversion!

46

But we shall be too long on the present subject for our reader's patience. General Baird led the forlorn hope in the storming of Seringapatam; the hazard and the bloody victory on that day were his. He was no sooner in possession, and had secured his conquest, than he was ordered to deliver up the command to his junior, Colonel Wellesley; in his own words, "Before the sweat was dry on my brow, I was superseded by an inferior officer." Ay, even before the commander-in-chief got the report from the storming officer, he who had won the city was laid by for a junior officer, who had so repeatedly been preferred before him. A little delay would have been decent. It is probable that General Harris the commander, having the fear of the governor-general before his eyes, determined to play the sycophant in obliging, as far as he could go, the image of power. Colonel Wellesley himself, we venture to say, would have rather the thing had been done in a more seemly manner. That this was his feeling may be seen by his sending the sword of Tippoo to General Baird, of which he was afterwards deprived, for a very noble purpose, the restoring it to him through General Harris's own hand; a mortification this general well merited for his conduct to one superior to himself, in every thing but seniority.

After considerable services in India, and the command of the Anglo-Indian army which went to Egypt, where he again upheld British honor in the affair of the Beys, whom the diplomatists of the time would have abandoned to their fate, he returned to India. Colonel, now General Wellesley, who was to have been his second in command in Egypt, and did not join, was again across his way in India. He drafted away the troops under Baird's command. The latter, too, found himself so thwarted and neglected, that, knowing beyond a doubt the Madras government was at the bottom