Raffles and Hastings by John Bastin

Author:John Bastin [Bastin, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789814634786
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIII

Final Exchanges and Hastings’s Death

Raffles addressed two further brief private letters to Lord Hastings from Bengkulu in October 1820 and May 1821,242 the first relating to the death of his brother-in-law, Captain Robert Hull,243 and the other to a locally printed work by the Baptist Mission Press.244 No other private letters appear to have passed between them, Raffles relying instead on his official despatches to the Supreme Government to keep Hastings informed of Singapore affairs even during the period when he was in charge of the administration of the settlement between October 1822 and June 1823.

At the time of his final departure from Singapore, Raffles received from the Governor-General in Council a welcome and possibly surprising endorsement of his administration:

On the occasion of relieving Sir Stamford Raffles from the superintendence of Singapore, the Governor-General in Council deems it an act of justice to that gentleman to record his sense of the activity, zeal, judgment, and attention to the principles prescribed for the management of the settlement, which has marked his conduct in the execution of that duty.245

Yet, even with this pleasing recognition of his services, and his own public acknowledgment of Hastings’s important role in the retention of Singapore, Raffles harboured a sense of grievance against the Governor-General. From their first meeting in Calcutta in 1818 he was critical of Hastings’s flamboyant style of government and his “regal state”, which he thought exceeded “all the Nonsense I have heard of”.246

Also, Hastings’s refusal to support his Sumatran policies, or honour his promise to appoint him to the governorship of Prince of Wales Island after Bannerman’s death, seems to have fed a bitter feeling of resentment, which he expressed in a letter to Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, in 1823 on the occasion of the arrival at Calcutta of Lord Amherst as Hastings’s successor:

He is likely to prove a very different Character to our last Governor General whose pomp and vanity exceeded all belief – He was undoubtedly extremely fortunate and by good management continued to obtain the public approbation of most parties – privately the best informed seem to doubt the justness of his Claim to such high approbation and I should not be surprised if at no distant date many of his measures are proved to be as hollow and unsound as he is himself – for certainly the high varnish with which he has covered them cannot last long and never was there a man less sincere than Lord Hastings –.247

Given these opinions of Hastings, there is undoubtedly a degree of hypocrisy in Raffles praising Hastings and his achievements in his private letters to him, certainly to the extent that he did, and then on his return to England soliciting Hastings’s support for his claim for compensation from the East India Company for his losses in the fire on the ship Fame.248 Writing to him in Malta, where Hastings was serving as Governor and Commander-in-Chief, he requested a testimonial in support of “the general character” of his administration, which

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