who had
signed Clive's letter and Warren Hastings was appointed to fill one of
the vacant places.

The five years that elapsed between the departure of Clive for England
in 1760 and his return to India in 1765 are not years that reflect much
credit upon the East India Company's administration. They had suddenly
found themselves lifted from a condition of dependency and, at one
moment, of despair to a position of unhoped-for authority and
influence. New to such power, dazzled by such influence, they abused
the one and they misused the other. But the part that Warren Hastings
played during this unfortunate five years reflects only credit upon
himself. The vices of the East India Company were not his vices; he
was no party to their abuse of their power, or their misuse of their
influence. When he was advanced from the Patna agency, his place was
taken by a Mr. Ellis, who seems to have been exceptionally and
peculiarly unfitted for the delicate duties of his post. He appears to
have carried on all his negotiations and communications with the Nawab
Mir Kasim with a high-handed arrogance and an absence of tact which
were in their way astonishing. Relations between the Nawab and Mr.
Ellis, as the Company's representative, became so strained that in 1762
Warren Hastings was again sent to Patna to investigate the whole
trouble. {252} Clive's judgment was already justified: Warren
Hastings's ability had already found much of the recognition it
deserved; his twelve years of Indian life had changed him from the
adventurous, inexperienced lad into the ripe and skilful statesman upon
whom his masters were confident that they could rely in such a moment
of emergency as had now come.

It would have been better for the Company if they had taken the advice
that Warren Hastings gave in the report on the quarrel between the
Nawab on the one side and Mr. Ellis on the other. He was a servant of
John Company, but he was too good a servant not to see the faults of
his masters and the follies to which those faults were leading. The
Company had blundered very badly before the coming of Clive; had
blundered through false security, through negligence, through
pusillanimity, through greed. After the victories of Clive had placed
the Board in Leadenhall Street, and its representatives in India, on a
very different footing, the Company blundered through rapacity, through
selfishness, through the arrogance born of an unforeseen success.