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SIR JOHN MALCOLM.*

THE Malcolms of Eskdale were a fortunate and numerous family. Four of the sons attainedknighthood in different professious, and with them, honours, fame, and fortune, although their origin was of the middle class, and their nativity a sheep farm. One hundred and fifty years since, that is in 1717, the Lord President of Scotland recom. mended the Earl of Dalkeith to present Robert Malcolm, a young preacher, of Fife, to the parish of Ewes, in Dumfriesshire. The presentation was issued five years after the date of Queen Anne's Patronage Bill; and must have been one of the earliest, if not the first, presentation of the Dalkeith family. The appointment endured for fortyfour years, the full average of Scotch incumbencies, even in a healthful, ventilated parish, as the Ewes was, is, and probably ever will be-unless some change occur in Eskdale, where the popula tion do not increase rapidly; for all the families are not so productive as the second generation of Malcolms in Burnfoot. This Burnfoot was a farm rented by the Earl upon easy terms to the Minister of Ewes. The name and the staple produce of the farm agreed admirably; for the district was chiefly pastoral, and the pasture was principally occupied by sheep. Antiquarians expend much criticism over the origin of names. Probably the parish of Ewes will not give them long labour in that research. Ewes are its most numerous animals, or they were in the last century; and we do not suppose that cultivation has materially eaten into sheep farming on that Eskdale yet. We have four considerable Esk Rivers in Scotland. They all intersect excellent arable land for many miles before their meeting with the ocean, and they all originate in pastoral regions, of which the Southern Esk has the more extensive, but not the higher or the wilder runs.

a wide circle of friends, notwithstanding his calamities. The Johnstones of Alva, a far distant family, who had, however, possessions in Eskdale of which the farm of Douglan formed part, were among the number. The late Sir Harry Moncrieff wrote subsequently of the farmer of Burnfoot in terms which would lead us to suppose that he had ranked among the upper yeomen of the land. Mrs. Malcolm's brothers, Dr. Gilbert Pasley, of Madras, and Mr. John Pasley, a merchant of London, were useful to the sons of the family, who only required to have a foot put in the stirrup in order to get upon the horse. So when John, or, as he was commonly called at Burnfoot, Jock, Malcolm was barely turned of eleven years he had obtained, through Mr. Johnstone, a nomination to the military service of the East India Company. He was little more than twelve years of age when he left Burnfoot for London, on his way to the Indies; and his biographer says that, on the morning of his departure from home, for London, with Mr. John Pasley, the merchant of the metropolis, and brother of his mother, his old nurse delivered to him the following charge-" Now (we assume it had been Noo'), Jock, my mon, be sure when ye are awa, ye kaim your head, and keep your face clean; if ye dinna, ye'll just be sent hame again." The old nurse may be fairly acquitted from any charge for this commingling of English orthography with Scotch pronounciation. John Malcolm lived in London for eighteen months, and arrived at Madras when not quite fourteen years old.

These were the days of Warren Hastings and of Sir Eyre Coote; of Hyder Ali and Tipoo Saib. In those days there were French in India; and the Indian empire was beginning merely to gather strength. Thus, the life of one man, and that not a long life, connects Hyder Ali, of Seringapatam, with Mehemet Ali, of Egypt; and three generations bring us from the Fifeshire boy, thinking of the Ministry, shortly after the revolution of 1688, to the Anglo-Indian author, statesman, and soldier, reingretting, for a short time, our Reform Bill. To the memory of Jock, the boy who left Eskdale in 1780, with instructions from his nurse "to kaim his head and keep his face clean"-fifty-five years afterwards, the people of Eskdale and Langholm assembled, under the guidance of Sir James Graham, not a sentimental politician, to lay the foundation of that obelisk which now overlooks Langholm, into the English border.

Mr. Robert Malcolm, Minister of Ewes, died in 1761-and his son George, who was, in the maternal descent, the grandson of Principal Campbell, succeeded to the farm of Burnfoot; which he had managed for some years, because a defect his articulation obliged him to abandon the pulpit for which he had been educated. He added to the farm of Burnfoot the farm of Douglan; but his dealings were not altogether prosperous; although he was distinguished by stern honesty and rigid principles; or, probably, because he was possessed in an eminent degree of these obvious dis qualifications to prosperity as a cattle breeder and salesman at the close of the last century. Even Dandy Dinmont, sharp man as he was, had difficulties to encounter which overcame George Mal. colm; who had moreover ten sons and seven daughters, and they all grew up to man and womanhood among the heather of Burnfoot.

George Malcolm was known and respected by

The family of Burnfoot were fortunate in the world. Four of them, we have stated, were knighted, or obtained baronetcies, for their public services. Admiral Sir Pulteney Malcolm was better known in Britain than his brethren; but, perhaps, Sir John Malcolm's services were more distinguished, more useful, and they were more varied.

* "Life of Sir John Malcolm." By J. W. KAYE, in 2 vols. London: Smith, Elder, and Co.

He

THE ANGLO-INDIAN OFFICER.

was his own master at fourteen years of age, in a strange land, where the natives are always willing to give considerable credit to the English Officers. We are not astonished, therefore, to read the following confession by his biographer. It is exactly what might have been expected :

I am afraid that he was not a prodigy of youthful virtue. He was a fine, free-spirited, active, excitable boy-fonder of play of all kinds than study-a good horseman, a crack shot, accomplished in all gymnastic exercises. In his regiment, and wherever he was known beyond his regiment, he went by the name of "boy Malcolm"- -a name which he retained many years afterwards-there was something so open and joyous in his manner, so active and so frolicsome. Of course he was beset by all manner of temptations. What he resisted, and what he did not, I do not particularly know; but he was soon immersed in debt, and surrounded by all its attendant difficulties.

The Anglo-Indian military officers had in those days the excuse of poverty for getting into debt, unless they possessed private means of support. For the withdrawal of this temptation they are indebted to Sir John Malcolm, who was, doubtless, rendered more active in the cause from a recollection of his own trials. He had written to his uncle, Mr. John Pasley, of London, for assistance, and that relative transmitted to him a sum of two hundred pounds; but it was stopped, in transitu, by his elder brother Robert, then in the Civil Service of the Company, at Madras, and who thought that John should be allowed to work out of his troubles by his own means, in the hope that thereby he would learn not to get into others of a similar kind afterwards. So he was indebted to an old native woman, at the Bazaar, who supplied him with provisions, without payment, until he should find the discharge of his debt convenient. He never forgot her kindness; for the grateful debtor paid the principal; and pensioned his native friend by way of interest.

The Indian military service is now superior to the Royal army for officers of more energy than wealth. The provision made for them may meet their expenses. Promotion in the Eastern is more secure than in the Western service. The reward is ultimately larger. The opportunities of obtaining distinction are greater. The manner of life is altogether more adventurous, more chivalrous, more pleasing to a rough-and-ready enthusiast than the club life of a guardsman. But until the late war, the commission of an AngloIndian officer was limited to the east of the Cape. When he reached the Atlantic or Europe, he was a civilian, or nobody. This arrangement was in tolerable, for not even his own manor was preserved to the soldier of the East. He could only rise to a given position, and there he was stopped; while a gentleman from the British army of Europe superseded him even in Indian warfare. The late Sir John Malcolm was an intimate friend of the Duke of Wellington, and from the correspondence, in these volumes, we learn that this absurd regulation deprived the great commander of aid, in Spain, from officers whose worth he had

learned in India, at a time when the BritishEuropean army was not distinguished by the genius of its chiefs-for Abercrombie and Moore had both fallen in fight.

The necessities of the late war wrought a change of that wretched system. Although nearly all our leading officers, like Sir Colin Campbell, Sir James Simpson, who was, we believe, much maligned, and Sir Richard England, had seen severe service in the East-especially the two former—yet the error of depriving the country of assistance from the most effective subordinate officers in the service became obvious; and Lord Panmure, in a few quiet lines, revolutionised our military system. The Queen's commission in the possession of an Anglo-Indian officer now carries home regiments. The appointment of General the same weight as a similar commission in our Grant to the chief command of the Madras army selection of Sir James Outram to the chief comwas the first consequence of this change. The mand of the army in the Persian war is a striking result. Lord Panmure has done much good to the army since his entrance into public life; and we shall regret his resignation of the War Office, if that event be to occur soon, with which some people threaten the service. progress of reform is far from rapid, but it is steady; and those who know best the difficulties of the road are disposed to the belief that the present Minister at War has endeavoured honestly to surmount them.

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hostilities against us by an attack "on the lines of Early in 1790, Tippoo Sultan re-commenced the Rajah of Travancore." The Nizam brought the forces of the Deccan to our assistance, and the

Mahrattas joined the war against Tippoo Sultan. Few years-sixty-a short period in history, have well-nigh forgotten, and the nationalities fused into passed since then, and all these great names are the general confederation of the Presidencies forming the Anglo-Indian empire. The 29th battalion of Native Infantry, the corps to which Nizam contingent, which, less overwhelming in the Malcolm was attached, were ordered to join the field than on paper, was equally feared by friends and foes. Mr. Kaye describes them as "cowards to the strong-tyrants to the weak-they made had no power to resist their merciless aggression." enemies, without any local distinctions, of all who It is pleasing to read how even at that early period the discipline of the British army, and the presence of British officers, had changed the character and conduct of the Sepoys; and Malcolm, in a by the Nizam's forces :paper on that march, says of one village plundered

:

village I have mentioned, they made a collection of as much
Whenever the guard paraded to march to the ill-fated
rice as each man could afford to give to the starving inhabi-
tants. This was distributed where they went.
Such con-
deemed folly, and excited a smile of pity on the countenances
duct (which was not confined to this single instance) was
of the unfeeling, plundering horsemen of the Nizam's army,

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but made a different impression on the inhabitants of the John Malcolm, who was employed and encouraged country.

Farther on he says

Reputation for justice and humanity preceding an army, is of more consequence than an advanced guard of 10,000 men. The force to which he was attached succeeded in reducing the strong forts Behaudur-Bundur, and Copoulee; and this was the only service rendered by them in that short war. During its existence, however, young Malcolm extended his acquaintance, and formed the desire to engage in diplomatic services. He began the study of the Persian language in the hope that an acquaintance with its mysteries might advance his purposes. He sought one diplomatic appointment a few minutes too late. The delay was providential to him. He had a long life's work to do, but his request would have been conceded had it been made in time. It was too late; and the officer who obtained the office was assassinated, soon after, at the court where he was resident, not from private but from public motives. The next few years of Malcolm's life were free from incident. He became sick, and went to the sea coast. He got well and returned to grow ill again, and finally obtained leave for England, sometime in 1794. In this visit he wrought hard to secure those advantages to the Indian officers-not quite equivalent to justice

which were then conceded to them. He arrived in England in July, 1794, and he was again at Madras in February, 1796, having been only two years absent, at a time when one year must have been occupied in the voyage here and back again. He spent his winter at home with his family and in Edinburgh. The promotion of Pulteney to be Captain of the Fox, the success of James, and an opportunity of becoming Secretary to Sir Alured Clarke, who had been appointed to the chief command at Madras, induced him to shorten his stay

at home. He arrived with General Clarke and the

forces under that officer at the Cape of Good Hope, in time to participate in the operations against the Dutch, which led to the capitulation of Cape Town and the establishment of our South African Colony. The military proceedings were unimportant; and at their close he wrote:

I have got an honourable, but troublesome employment in recruiting men out of the prisoners of war for the service of the Company in India. A set of finer fellows I never knew

—all Germans. I have been very successful. I have hitherto

acted together with Lieutenant Owen from Bengal, but as he sails to-morrow, the whole business falls on my shoulders. I expect in a month to have upwards of 200 for Madras. Nearly 300 are already embarked for Bombay and Bengal.

Lieutenant Malcolm's life in Madras was destitute of excitement, over a period of peace passed in the family of Sir Alured Clarke. The Marquis Wellesley landed at Madras on his way to Calcutta early in 1798, and he met Malcolm, now a Captain, who submitted to him papers he had drawn up on the condition of the native states. This seems to have been the origin of an intercourse which was in the last degree serviceable to Sir

by the noble Governor-General both in diplomacy and war. Sir Pulteney Malcolm, while captain of the Fox, conveyed Colonel Wellesley, who became afterwards the Duke of Wellington, to India, and even this slight circumstance may have contributed to increase Malcolm's intercourse with the Wellesleys; but however it originated, it was of a Towards the very close and confidential nature. sident at Hyderabad. Captain Kirkpatrick, the close of that year, he was appointed Assistant Rebrother of the former Resident, Colonel KirkpaThe Nizam employed a trick, was his senior. inclined to the French interest. A French party numerous force, trained by French officers, who

were established at the Court. In 1799 this force was disarmed and disbanded without resistance; but the proceeding required address and skill on the part of the British Resident; and Mal

colm had then a lesson of tactics in Indian life that served him well afterwards. He. carried to

the Governor-General the colours of the "annihilated French force," and he was again ordered to join the Nizam's contingent when war was declared against Tippoo Sahib. The greater part of the native soldiers, belonging to the old French force, were employed by the Nizam, and belonged to his army. The Sepoys, deprived of their old officers, became disorderly or mutinous on the march. Captain Malcolm was employed to command them; and when afterwards an European regiment was joined to this division of the contingent, the 33rd first time Captain Malcolm was brought into conwas selected by General Harris; and thus for the nection directly with Colonel Wellesley.

They were upon the march against Seringapatam. The capture of that celebrated fortress, and the death of its owner closed the war upon the 4th May; gaged in diplomatic arrangements, either in that but during the summer, Captain Malcolm was enIn the quarter or at the Court of the Nizam. autumn, the Governor-General decided to send an ambassador to the Persian Court, at Teheran, in the hope of exciting the Persians to deliver us from the fear of Zemaun Shah, who was then the

ruler of Affghanistan, and who threatened to invade India.

We are now at war with Persia in defence of Affghanistan. So late as 1799, Malcolm was sent to Persia in search of help against the Affghans.

As the British people had not been represented in Persia for two centuries preceding that date, Lord Wellesley wished to give an air of Oriental magnificence to the mission, and he could not have selected an officer more ready to second this policy than Captain Malcolm. His expenditure and presents during the Persian embassy were extremely profuse. They probably contributed to establish a certain influence at Teheran for a time; but only for a short time; and it was overthrown by the adroitness and tact of the French Embassy, which, soon after Captain Malcolm's departure, was rendered resident; so that his stipulations against

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any intercourse with the French went for nothing. | cial relations with Persia were never extensive. He embarked at Bombay, on the 29th December, 1799, for the Persian Gulf, in one of the Company's frigates, with a suite who might have satisfied an older diplomatist. The frigate reached Muscat in eleven days, and appears to have been a slow sailer. The opportunity was seized to improve our intercourse with the Imaum of Muscat, and the Arab chiefs have ever since that date proved true friends of the British connexion. Malcolm did not reach Bushire until the 1st February, 1800. Then began the usual course of bribery in the shape of presents.

The Governor of Bushire, Sheikh-Nusser, with a keen eye to the coming presents, was profuse in his expressions of respect for the English in general, and the new Ambassador in particular. And a day or two afterwards he received his quota of the wonderful supply of jewelled watches, doublebarrelled guns, achromatic telescopes, huntsmen's knives, and coloured broadcloths, with which Malcolm had. sagaciously provided himself. Having despatched letters to the Persian monarch and his prime minister at Teheran, and to the Prince Regent at Shiraz, setting forth the objects of his mission, Malcolm pitched his camp a little way on the road to the latter place.

A month elapsed before he received an answer even from Shiraz, and upon its arrival it was not satisfactory, and the middle of May had come before a reply was received from the more distant Teheran. In a month afterwards the Embassy reached Shiraz; but they only arrived at Ispahan on the 23rd September. They found it, though fallen from its former greatness, beyond all compare the richest and most populous city in Persia. Cashan, further on, was "a flourishing city, whose silks and carpets are amongst the finest in the world." And on the 16th November, Captain

Malcolm, the son of the Eskdale farmer, was presented to the Shah of Persia, as the representa

tive of the Governor-General of India. Difficulties

arose regarding the manner of his presentation. The Persian authorities insisted that he only represented a subordinate official, and not King George of England; and was not entitled, therefore, to the consideration that might have been bestowed upon the Governor-General himself. Malcolm Sahib carried himself with a high head, and a liberal hand, through these difficulties, and became a favourite at the Persian court by the extent of his largesses. His engagements among the Persians continued until the spring of 1801.

He had several audiences of his Majesty, and at all he was received not only with marked respect, but with an affability of manner which was a flattering attribute to the personal character of the Envoy. He presented Malcolm with a dress of honour, which the English gentleman wore over his uniform; on the occasion of his next visit to the Shah, he gave him a jewelled dagger, and an elaborate portrait of him. self, as marks of his royal affection; and at the last visit

which the Ambassador paid him, he said that he "should always consider Malcolm as a favourite, and desire his ministers to write to him in whatever part of the world he might be."

Two treaties were negociated, one commercial and the other political. The former was of little importance to our Government, for our commer

The political treaty was one of enmity towards the Affghan chief and the French Government. Zemaun Shah, the Affghan, was soon rendered incapable of mischief, by the rebellion of his own chieftains; while the French Government in a short time recovered its ascendancy at Teheran. The islands in the Persian Gulf which Captain Malcolm wished to obtain for the British Government were refused steadily; although he made great efforts to secure them. It is not improbable that now, more than fifty years after his mission, Sir J. Outram, another west country Scotchman, also of bumble origin, may take possession of them permanently, without much negociation. It is rather remarkable that our business with Persia has always been conducted through Scotchmen, or with very few exceptions; and astute as countrymen are, and patriotic, even a little selfish in patriotism, as some of them were, yet they have always had to pull against a current of diplomacy at Teheran, occasionally French, and sometimes Russian. The French from some not apparent motives, have endeavoured long to influence the Persian Court, and even now French officers have led the siege of Herat. The Russians have more obvious reasons for seeking to rule in Persia, which they regard with all that affection that the boaconstrictor may be supposed to bestow upon the ox that is straying within the serpent's grasp.

our

The Shah's love for Malcolm Sahib evaporated in the course of a few years; and he even refused to his friend admission within his dominions. He returned by way of Bagdad to the Gulf, and reached Bombay upon the 13th of May, after a stormy passage of twenty-one days, over a part of in half that time, and steamers can run in four or the Indian Ocean that our sailing vessels now cross five days. He received the appointment of private secretary to the Marquis Wellesley, and those negociations in Oude that, in our own time, travelled with him up the Ganges, to complete

have led, under Outram, to the absorption of that territory. The travellers earned the gratitude of the villagers at one point on the Ganges, by destroying three tigers, which had taken up their abode near to them, and killed four of their bullocks on the previous night. The joy of the villagers over the death of their foes reminds us of Nimrod's accession to power, and the cause of it; and those facilities which our modern Nimrods

neglect of rendering themselves popular-since tigers still kill bullocks in India, eat up many persons annually at Singapore, and wolves destroy three to four hundred children per annum, we are told, in the Punjaub. Writing at Patna, the great region of rice, Captain Malcolm says, on the 3rd October, now fifty-five years since :

Nothing can exceed the beauty of the country through which we have lately passed. I never saw, in any part of the world, so much cultivation, or such a general appearance of comfort and happiness among the home classes, as I have in this voyage.

14

THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE MAHRATTA WAR.

And again, at Benares, on the 14th of Novem- the mountains in a pastoral village, he was released, ber, he writes:

We have, since you left us, passed through one of the finest and most highly cultivated tracts of country in this world.

The letters from which these extracts are taken were addressed to Sir George Barlow, who had been engaged in the settlement of the land tax in these provinces, and the writer further states:

What adds to my pleasure, in contemplating these scenes, is to hear every man I ask tell how jungles have been cleared, and waste places brought into cultivation. I cannot but envy your feelings upon this subject. I confess before I travelled through your provinces I was not perfectly reconciled to your system.

A greater man than either the writer or his friend had impressed his system on the soil of Bengal, before them; and to Warren Hastings that country is chiefly indebted for its land system, which has been instrumental in maintaining the quiet of the country, and in providing against those periodical famines that have wasted other parts

of India.

In December, Captain Malcolm was despatched upon a secret mission to Madras, with the view of counteracting the appointments at home, by retaining some of the officials then in Madras in their places. It was one of the contests which the Governor-General had to conduct both with the Court of Directors and the Home Government; an exercise of intellect, and occasionally of intrigue, in which nearly all the Governor-Generals of these days were practised; for it should be remembered that the course of post between Calcutta and London was then nearly twelve months, instead of the present three, which we trust will be reduced to one before the world be much older. The mission was successful.

At this period a great calamity occurred, which tended, undoubtedly, to render nugatory the exertions of Malcolm in Persia, and all the expenditure of his mission to Teheran. Hadjee Khalib Khan had been appointed by the Shah of Persia to return the visit, and he had landed at Bombay, early in the summer of 1802. He halted there, to arrange the forms of his presentation at the Court of the Governor-General. During that delay, a " quarrel arose between the Ambassador's retainers and the English Sepoys forming the guard of honour." Hadjee Khalib Khan interfered to quell the disturbance, and was killed by a casual shot. The occurrence caused very great grief to Malcolm, who was upon terms of friendly intercourse with the Persian nobleman, who had been selected for this honour; to meet a deplorable fate. Malcolm was instructed by the Governor-General to communicate with the Persian Court. He repaired to Bombay for that purpose, and an amusing illustration is given of the state of the road, by his capture on the highway, between Bombay and Poonah. A chief wanted a hostage in the troubles that loomed in the distance, and he seized Malcolm. After a short confinement and a happy one, among

but the chief paid a heavy fine for his precaution in seizing an English Sahib, who, at this date, had taken rank as a Major. From Bombay he communicated with the Persian sovereign and his minis. ters regarding the death of their ambassador; and Mr. Kaye describes the result of his proceedings in the passage which we extract :

All were satisfied, from the King on the throne to the humblest of the defunct Elchees' retainers. But the magnitude of the crisis had been greatly exaggerated. The death of the ambassador created but little sensation in Persia, and that little soon passed away. It was not regarded as a national outrage, but as a debt contracted by us, which money payments might promptly discharge. And it was said soon afterwards, at Shiraz, that the English might kill ten ambassadors if they would pay for them at the same

rate.

Another ambassador was not, however, sent; from which we conclude that the Persian noblemen were not so willing to be killed as Mr. Kaye supposes. The Persian sovereign may not have been inclined to resent a calamity which was accidental, although he may have entertained a different opinion; but we know that five years afterwards he welcomed General Gardanne, the Ambassador of France, and submitted to his influence.

In October, 1802, a great battle was fought near Poonah, between the armies of Holkar and Scindiah, who was assisted by Badjee Row, but was defeated. In his discomforture, he sought assistance from the British. Their help was obtained, but Poonah became soon after one of our principal stations, and is now a familiar word—the title of a leading town in Anglo-India. Major Malcolm was named to the residency at Mysore, but the Governor-General, acquainted with his diplomatic tact, detained him to deal with Holkar, Scindiah, and their subordinates. Although no official was probably more acquainted with India, yet he had altogether miscalculated the strength of the Mahrattas; for he wrote, now exactly fifty-four years ago, or upon New Year's Day of 1803, to one of his correspondents, Kirkpatrick, a political agent of the Government :

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Ten days afterwards, he wrote to General Lake, who was then Commander-in-Chief, in a similar style of confidence, not only as to the result of a battle, but also of a negociation which would render unnecessary any hostile proceedings :

As I consider hostilities to be very improbable, I shall not take up your time with speculations upon the likely result of such an event-I shall only express my full conviction of a prosperous issue. The British arms would meet with little opposition from even the combined efforts of the weak and discordant branches of the Mahratta Empire, and one short campaign would for ever dissipate the terror with which the Indian politicians in England are accustomed to contemplate the power of the Mahratta nation.

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