Fyzoola Khan retired to the mountains with the broken remnant of the gallant host, but the country was left bare to the knife of rapine. Seldom, if ever, have what are called the rights of victory been more inhumanly abused. 'Every man who bore the name of Rohilla was either put to death or forced to seek safety in exile." But this did not exceed the stipulations of the treaty; for by Hastings' own letters it appears that in its provisions there was the specific agreement that, if necessary, "the Rohillas should be exterminated," the language is his own.1 By the time the work of confiscation was complete, and the red gleam of burning homesteads no longer lit by night the once happy vales of Rohillcund, the allies found the season spent, the country utterly exhausted, and Fyzoola Khan intrenched so strongly in the mountains that no immediate hope could be entertained of his reduction. To him and his followers they granted, therefore, terms of amnesty; and thus ended the war.

We had not the slightest pretence of quarrel with the Rohillas. We had not even a colourable complaint against them. Rohillcund was rather a defence to our newlyacquired provinces, and its commerce and agriculture nourished ours. But money was wanted to meet exorbitant salaries and charges, and the Governor-General made up his mind to his mind to pay the usury of blood. He accepted the money from Oude, and hired the Company's troops to the Vizier, to seize and expropriate Rohilleund. The liberties and lives of a friendly race were the price of the subsidy. He well knew the bravery of the people he was engaging to hunt down, and the misery, violence, and desolation to which he was devoting them. He was remonstrated with by Champion, who offered to throw up 1 Fifth Parliamentary Report.

most touching came But the Viceroy was

his command, and deprecations the from the unfortunate Rohilla chiefs. inexorable. Not a single stipulation was made as to the use to which the British troops were to be put, or the severities they might be called upon to execute. They were placed unconditionally at the disposal of the Vizier; the word was given and the doom of a gallant race was sealed. Hastings pocketed £20,000 as a private present for signing the treaty, and the public treasury was replenished to the extent of £400,000.

Disagreements and divisions in the Council at Calcutta, at first whispered only among the English there, gradually became noised about. Native resentment, long repressed, at length found utterance. A majority of the Council were ready, for the first time, to listen with impartiality, if not with sympathy and pity, to the plaints of an injured people. Recent grievance and long-cherished grudge welled up on every side like the surging waters of an inundation. The danger of Hastings grew imminent, but his courage did not fail. He continued to occupy the chair of state regardless of sarcasms, inuendoes, and protests. Clavering, Monson, and Francis recorded their strong disapproval of the bargain with the Vizier, recalled the troops from Rohillcund, and refused to ratify the Treaty of Benares. But the Viceroy was not to be turned from his purpose. He understood what his employers wanted better than his antagonists did. The protests of the triumvirate appealed to the conscience of the Company, whatever that might be; his congratulations touched their heart. Exemplary regrets and admonitions not to do it again were, after due deliberation, despatched to India; but, as we shall presently see, the Ministers of the Crown thought it would be absurd to call Hastings to account for the triumphs he

had achieved; and both they and the Directors acquiesced

in the profitable wrong.

Specific accusations were publicly made against the Governor-General of vast sums exacted from natives, under the name of presents, for promotion to office and for other considerations. Hastings steadily refused to hear, far less to meet, these accusations. To entertain them at the Council Board, he said, was to disparage his authority, and lower the Government in the estimation of the natives; he would not condescend to answer any of them, and whenever the majority attempted to pursue their investigations, he made a point of rising and quitting the room. They persevered without him, and placed on record the complaints of Munnee Begum, the Ranee of Burdwan, and her adopted son Ram Kaeheen, Roda Shurn Roy, a vakeel of the Nawab of Bengal, Casmul, the farmer of a large district, and three English gentlemen-Mr Grant, accountant to the Council of Moorshedabad, and the two Messrs Fowke-all of whom charged him specifically with acts of gross venality and extortion. A minute of the Council, adopted by Clavering, Francis, and Monson, in March 1775, summed up his offences thus "There is no species of peculation from which the Governor-General has thought it reasonable to abstain. We believe the proofs of his having appropriated four parts of the salary of the Phousdar of Hooghly are such as will not leave a shadow of a doubt concerning his guilt in the mind of any unprejudiced person." These accusations subsequently became the subject of inquiry by Parliament, and testimony the most conflicting was adduced to sustain and rebut them. There was in existence then, however, a piece of evidence of which neither Lords or Commons were aware, and which weighs more heavily than a score of vindictive affi

davits or unwrappings of finance accounts.

In a letter to

Lord North, dated 27th March 1775, while the charges were still fresh, Hastings elaborately inveighs against the mischief of the course taken by Clavering, Monson, and Francis, and reasons most ingeniously on the irrelevancy of the questions raised by them to the ultimate interests of the State. He assigns, moreover, many plausible grounds for assuming the improbability of much that they alleged against him; but there is not from beginning to end the simple assertion on the word of a gentleman that the allegations with regard to taking bribes were false, or any statement that can be stretched into a denial. Lord North was the Minister who had made him Vice-King of Hindu

stan.

There was not living the man with whom it was so important for him to stand well. He was little likely to hesitate about any amount of varnish or colouring of facts, if that would have done; yet, writing confidentially on the spur of the moment, he does not venture on one manly or straightforward expression of denial, such as honest men wrongfully impugned are wont to utter. But this is not all. We have the damning fact that when impeachment at home was subsequently impending, Hastings thought it prudent to lodge in the treasury of Calcutta £200,000, which he could only account for as having been from time to time received by him in his public capacity, and having been inadvertently omitted until then to be placed to the credit of the State.

At the head of his accusers stood Nuncomar. His pride as the ablest man of his race had been wounded by Hastings, his ambition as a skilful financier and diplomatist had been baffled by him, his self-love as the wiliest of intriguers had been stung; for he had been outwitted partly by the craft of Hastings, when Resident at Moorshedabad, in the affair of

Mahomed Reza Khan. He had waited for revenge, and the opportunity at last had come. Between these two men there existed that antagonism, intense, profound, and inextinguishable, of which perfect sympathy alone is capable. They had looked into each other's soul, and recognised in each the image of himself reflected there. Of all his race none probably but Nuncomar knew all Hastings had done; for none but he had the same purpose to gain in watching the windings of his dark and devious course, or possessed the means of obtaining so much information with respect to all his secret doings. On the other hand, there was no Englishman in India who had motives so strong as the Viceroy for observing closely and scrutinising thoroughly the acts and aims of the subtle and specious Hindu. Their resemblance morally and intellectually was complete. Fairspoken, impassive, fearless, and unfathomable, they were alike insensible to the sufferings of others, and devoted to self-worship. Insatiable of money, yet munificent in its outlay; admired by those who came not too close to them, and distrusted most by those who knew them best; gentle in prosperity and superbly self-possessed in danger; unwearied in business, inexhaustible in resources, imperturbable alike in the gloom of adversity and the glare of triumph, at the bar of judgment and in the face of death.

Nuncomar placed in the hands of Francis a petition to be heard in person by the Council, before whom he undertook to prove that Hastings had sold appointments to office for large sums of money, and that Mahomed Reza Khan had been exonerated from vast peculations for a bribe of unusual magnitude. The Governor-General refused with contempt to be confronted with his accuser, and denied the right of his colleagues to constitute themselves his judges. They might, if they would, refer the question home, but he