XIX. 1781 to be "obviously inadmissible. Where (said he) BOOK is our authority to judge or control the conduct of the vizier, further than respects his engagement with us? Even granting we had an authority to control the vizier's conduct in the manner you propose, we must have demonstration of the infal libility of the person we intrusted with such an authority, before we could be vindicated in the delegation of it. All the country subdued becomes absolutely the vizier's. On the terms you propose, the English commander would supersede his authority in the government of his new possessions." In lieu therefore of the expedient suggested by the good sense and humanity of colonel Champion, the governor-general ordered his resident, Mr. Middleton, in whom fortunately no "demonstration of infallibility". was required, to remon strate and expostulate with the vizier concerning his conduct towards the Rohillas," in order to exculpate the English government from the IMPUTATION, as Mr. Hastings well expresses it, of assenting to such a procedure." But so little did the vizier regard these feeble and formal remonstrances, that in the sequel the family of Hafiz, after suffering the most dreadful and shocking indignities, were carried in captivity to Fyzabad. In a subsequent letter from the nabob Mahub Ulla Khan, the eldest son of Hafiz, he most earnestly supplicates, in the name of GOD and Christ, the XIX. ' BOOK interposition of the English commander for their release. "O my guardian," says he, "turn your 1781. face to the business of a slave, and have us enlarged, and it will not go unrewarded." As to the extravagant plea set up by Mr. Hastings in defence of this most infamous and unprovoked invasion, "that the Rohillas were not a nation, but a body of foreign adventurers, who possessed the country by a prescription of only sixty years," it is surely sufficient to reply, that the inhabitants of Rohilcund under their present government enjoyed peace and prosperity-that these people, whom he will not allow to be a nation, were able to bring an army of fifty or sixty thousand men into the field; and that it might with infinitely more force be retorted on the English themselves, that THEY were a body of "foreign adventurers," who had been at this time scarcely seven summers in possession of the country they occupied *. With equal feeling and animation it has been said in relation to the general merits of the Rohilla war, "There is no power in this world that can annihilate such a question- THOUGH IT WERE DEAD, YET SHALL IT LIVE. Numidæ et de terminatione Scipionis mentiri eos arguebant; et si quis veram originem juris exigere vellet quem proprium agrum Carthaginiensium in Africa esse? Advenis quantum secto bovis tergo amplecti loci potuerint tantum ad urbem communiendam precario datum quicquid Byrsam sedem suam excesserint i atque injuria partum habere.-Liv. lib. xxxiv. § 62. XIX. The cause by its own energy shall turn upon the BOOK force that oppresses it, and sting to destruction the vulnerable heel that endeavours to keep it down." Another very important transaction, of which the new counsellors were also for the first time apprised at their arrival in India, left no room for doubt, if doubt could otherwise have subsisted, as to the real character and systematic policy of the governorgeneral. In the solemn treaty of peace concluded August 1765 at Illahabad, between the nabob vizier of Oude and the East India Company, it is stipulated that the emperor Sha Allum shall remain, under the guarantee of the Company, in full possession of the provinces of Corah and Illahabad, as a royal demesne; in consideration of which the dewannee. of Bengal was granted by the emperor in perpetuity to the Company. About the year 1772, the emperor, who had hitherto resided at Illahabad, removed to the antient capital of Dehli; but engaging soon after this period in unsuccessful hostilities with the Mahrattas, this people compelled him while in their power to grant sunnuds for the surrender of Corah and Illahabad to them. But Mr. Hastings, in his letter of March 1773 to the court of directors, says, "In no shape can this compulsatory cession by the KING release us from the obligation we are under to defend 1781. XIX. 1781. BOOK the provinces which we have so particularly gua ranteed to him ;" and they were accordingly occupied by the troops of the Company, and taken under its immediate and avowed protection. In a short time, however, the ideas of Mr. Hastings suffered a total change; for by an act of the governor and council, passed in June following, the engagements between the Company and the emperor are declared to be DISSOLVED by his alienation from them and their interests, manifested by his removal to Dehli. Nevertheless, " if the KING should make overtures to renew his former connection, his right to reclaim the districts of Corah and Illahabad could not, say they, be disputed; and the governor is authorised to restore them to him, on condition that he should RENOUNCE his CLAIM to the ANNUAL TRIBUTE of twenty-six lacks of rupees, reserved to the emperor out of the revenues of Bengal, and to the arrears which might be due." Yet in the treaty concluded in person by the governor-general with the vizier, in September 1773, it is asserted, "that his majesty, having abandoned the districts of Corah and Illahabad, and given a sunnud for Corah and Currah to the Mahrattas, had thereby forfeited his right to the said districts." And in his subsequent report of this interview and negotiation with Sujah ul Dowla, the governor declared, "that the administration would have been culpable in the XIX. 1781. highest degree for retaining possession of Corah BOOK and Illahabad for any other purpose than that of making an advantage by the disposal of them, and therefore he had ceded them to the vizier for fifty lacks of rupees-the net annual revenue of these provinces being estimated at twenty-five lacks." At the same time the governor and council determined to withhold the tribute of twenty-six lacks of rupees from the emperor, pretending "that they were not satisfied of his amicable intentions, and that the reduced state of the treasury rendered such payment impracticable." Such was the treatment which the emperor of Hindostan received from the servants of a foreign mercantile company, although Mr. Hastings himself, in a minute recorded in the council-book on another occasion, declared, "that, fallen as the house of TIMUR is, it is yet the relic of the most illustrious line of the eastern world-that its sovereignty is universally acknowledged, though the substance of it no longer exists-and that the Company itself derives its constitutional dominion from its ostensible bounty." The disinterestedness of Mr. Hastings in all points of pecuniary concern had in England been the theme of high panegyric; but certain facts which came to the knowledge of the new counsellors, on or soon after their arrival in India, set this part of his character also in a light which could scarcely be con |