ssible to the British forces
either for hostilities or protection. Put in this way the case seemed,
no doubt, plausible enough to Hastings, and to all who thought with
Hastings that Indian chiefs and princes were but pieces on a board, to
be pushed this way or that way, advanced or removed altogether at the
pleasure and for the advantage of the English resident and ruler. But
what actually happened was that Hastings, in defiance of the whole
principle of the Company's administration in India, interfered in the
contests of native races and lent the force of English arms to aid a
despot in the extirpation of his enemies. It is not to the point to
urge that the Rohillas were not undeserving of their fate. Even if the
Rohillas were little other than robber chiefs, even if their existence
constituted a weak point in the lines of defence against the
ever-terrible Mahrattas, all this did not in the eyes of Burke and of
those who thought with Burke justify Hastings in lending English arms
for their extermination and receiving Indian money for the loan. They
saw an act of hideous injustice and corruption where Hastings saw
merely a piece of ingenious state policy. He gave the troops, he got
the money. The Rohillas were destroyed as an independent power, and
the Company was richer than it had been before the transaction by some
four hundred thousand pounds.

The story of Nand Kumar comes into the history as the result of an
organic change in the composition and administration of the East India
Company. North's {260} Regulating Act of 1773 made many changes in the
administration of English India. The changes that most directly
concerned Hastings converted the Governor of Bengal into a
Governor-General, and reduced his Council to four members. The
Governments of Madras and Bombay were placed under the joint control of
Governor-General and Council. Hastings was appointed, naturally
enough, to be the new Governor-General. His four councillors were
Richard Barwell, General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Philip Francis.
Barwell was the only one who was a member of Hastings's old Council.
The three others were in England; they had been chosen expressly to
guide Indian policy in accordance with the views of the home
Government. Clavering and Monson had already earned some distinction
of a soldierly kind; Francis was by far the ablest of the three. The
author of the "Letters of Junius" was much of a scholar and something
of